
Class. 
Book- 






lEi if ElGLii TO THE PACIFIC. 



Notes of a Vacation Trip Across the Continent 
inApril, May, AND June, 1884. 



Jl A. Si, IN Hartford Evening Post. 



HARTFORD, CONN.: 

PRESS OF THE CASE, LOCKWOOD & BRAINARD CO. 

1884. 



51^ 



REMARK 



The thirteen letters which constitute this 
volume were originally contributed to The 
Haktford Evening Post bj one of the 
representatives of that journal whose good 
fortune it was to be also a member of the 
Raymond Excursion Part}^ which left Boston 
for the Pacific Goast on the 24th of April 
last. The letters were not written with 
reference to any further publication, and 
they appear in this form solely through 
respect of the writer for the wishes of those 
of the party who could not be supplied with 
files of The Post containing the full series. 

J. A. S. 
Haktfokd, June 30, 1884. 



PEESONNEL, 



W. Raymond, 
C. C. Harding, 
H, A. Titus, 

H. H. FULLAM, 

Almy, Chas. T., 
Andrews, S. C, 
Andrews, Mrs. S. C, 
Andrews, Thomas E., 
Andrews, Mrs. Thomas E. 
Bacon, Mrs, J, E., 
Bradley, H. O., 
Bradley, Mrs. H. O., 
Brown, Mrs. Mary S., 
Ball, Sidney A., 
Chase, Mrs. S. A. D., 
Cox, Rev. Samuel, 
Cox, Mrs. Samuel, 
Craven, John Y., 
Denison, Miss T. A., 
Fish, Daniel W., 
Goodspeed, Dr. Helen A., 
Grout, Mrs. Mary J., 
Hamilton, S., 
Hamilton, Mrs. S., 
Hamilton, Master, 
Hamilton, Master, 



Boston, Mass., Manager. 
Boston, Mass., In Charge. 
Bellows Falls, Vt., Assistant. 
Concord, N. H., Assistant. 

Tilton, N.H. 
Worcester, Mass. 
"Worcester, Mass. 
Holliston, Mass. 
Holliston, Mass. 
Worcester, Mass. 
Worcester, Mass. 
Worcester, Mass, 
Lynn, Mass. 
Carlisle, Mass. 
Roxbury, Mass. 
Newtown, N. Y. 
Newtown, N. Y. 
Salem, N. J. 
Springfield, Mass. 
Brooklyn, N. Y. 
Worcester, Mass. 
Worcester, Mass. 
Pittsburgh, Pa. 
Pittsburgh, Pa. 
Pittsburgh, Pa. 
Pittsburgh, Pa, 



PERSONNEL. 



Howe, George, 
Howe, Mrs. George, 
Kimball, Miss J. W., 
Knowlton, A., 
Longman, Mrs. Kate, 
Marx, Hon. Guido, 
Marx, Mrs. Guido, 
Marx, Miss Ella, 
Maesey, Mrs. L. D., 
Merriman, E. A., 
Merriman, Mrs. E. A., 
Mills, Hiram F., 
Mills, Mrs. Hiram F., 
Mcculloch, Mrs. L. S., 
Nichols, Chas. H., 
Nichols, Mrs. Chas. H., 
Pinney, C. H., M.D., 
Pinney, Mrs. C. H., 
Reed, Miss Sophia, 
Richards, F. C, 
Riedler, Mas, 
Shattuck, H. B., 
Shattuck, Miss Bertha C, 
Spalding, J. A., 
Taft, Mrs. Calvin, 
Talbot, Seth, Jr., 
Talbot, Mrs. Seth, Jr., 
Tenney, Alfred E., 
Valpey, H.R., 
Valpey, Mrs. H. R., 
Whidden, Thomas J., 
Whidden, S. H., 
Williams, Mrs. J. M., 
Worcester, Rev. J. H., 
Worcester, Mrs. J. H., 



Lynn, Mass. 
Lynn, Mass. 
Worcester, Mass. 
West Gardner, Mass. 
Brooklyn, N. Y. 
Toledo, Ohio. 
Toledo, Ohio. 
Toledo, Ohio. 
Danvers, Mass. 
Meriden, Conn. 
Meriden, Conn. 
Lawrence, Mass. 
Lawrence, Mass. 
Stevens Point, Wis. 
Boston, Mass. 
Boston, Mass. 
Derby, Conn. 
Derby, Conn. 
Lynn, Mass. 
Boston, Mass. 
Boston, Mass. 
Lowell, Mass. 
Lowell, Mass. 
Hartford, Conn. 
Worcester, Mass. 
Tremont, 111. 
Tremont, 111. 
Providence, R. I. 
Lynn, Mass. 
Lynn, Mass. 
Boston, Mass. 
Boston, Mass. 
Worcester, Mass. 
Burlington, Vt. 
Burlington, Vt. 



GOJ^TENTS. 



I. First Notes of the Journey, - - 9 

II. From Chicago to Colorado, - - 18 

III. In and About Denver, - - - 31 

IV. Up Among and Over the Rockies, - 45 
V. Deserts, Flowers, Orange Groves, Vine- 
yards, - - - - - 67 

VI. Delightful Days at Los Angeles, - 80 

*VII. Tehachapi Pass and the Sierra Nevadas, 94 

VIII. The California of '49 and '84, - - 108 

IX. The Sundries of Saa Francisco, - 126 

X. Menlo Park and Santa Clara Valley, - 139 

XI. A Long-to-be-Remembered Week, - 153 

XII. Good-Bye to San Francisco, - - 166 

XIII. The Backward Journey— Home Again, 185 



First Notes of the Journey — TJie Start — 
Tke Party — In a Pullman Sleeper — The 
Route — Chicago and its Characteristics — Be- 
coming Well Acquainted. 

Sherman House, Chicago, III., 
April 2Y, 1884. 
And this is Chicago ; great, bustling, 
grimy, wicked Chicago. I came in yester- 
day at its back door, as one must enter every 
city who enters it by railroad ; and the back 
door of Chicago is not unlike that of a 
hundred other American cities, with its 
uncanny brats, its squalid women, its miser- 
able hovels, and its irrepressible goat. In 
approaching Boston, for miles in any direc- 
tion the observer is favored with a distinct 
view of the city in wonderful and charming 



IQ FROM NEW ENGLAND 

detail ; in approaching Chicago, only an 
impenetrable cloud of smoke indicates its 
locality, completely enveloping and obscur- 
ing from remote view every object, how- 
ever otherwise prominent. This omnipres- 
ent smoke is a feature of Chicago existence. 
It comes from the universal combustion of 
their bituminous coal. It impregnates the 
atmosphere and fills the nostrils with every 
breath. It begrimes architecture, it invades 
the inner sanctuary of home to the discom- 
fiture of tidy housekeepers, it precludes the 
possibility of clean linen, or clean hands, or 
clean anything, and, to an Eastern man, 
proves a source of constant discomfort. 
Doubtless the citizen becomes so accus- 
tomed to it as not to be annoyed, although 
I do not see how he can help regretting that 
some of the beautiful and costly marble 
buildings are so stained and aged after a 
brief exposure to this coal smoke, as to be 
indistinguishable from commonest stone. 
As you will observe from my date, this is 



TO THE PACIFIC. W 

Sunday. I suppose the proper thing for me 
to do this morning would have been to join 
the company of worshipers at Dr. Kit- 
tridge's. But instead I strolled down Mich- 
igan avenue, by the lakeside, past the great 
exposition building where the national Ee- 
publican and Democratic Conventions are 
soon to assemble, through Broadway, over 
the Randolph street bridge, and after a cir- 
cuit of eight or ten miles thus made on foot^ 
feel almost sorry that I did not adopt the more 
restful plan of my friend Mr. Fish, who 
spent his hour on the cushions of the sanc- 
tuary above alluded to. In my profane 
tramp I have noticed that a Christian ob- 
servance of the Sabbath is not the fashion 
in Chicago. There seems to be no general 
suspension of business. Of course the street 
and railroad cars run as often as on any other 
day, but stores, and offices, and shops are 
open and doing business, loaded trucks and 
express w^agons are busy, hucksters cry their 
wares on the sidewalks, and there is very 



12 FROM NEW ENGLAND 

little to distinguish Sunday from the day 
last preceding. 

I spent two or three hours yesterday 
among public buildings and getting impres- 
sions of men and things in this incompre- 
hensible city. I saw the three-million-dollar 
county building on Randolph street, with its 
eighty odd rooms, in all but a half a dozen 
of which tliey have to keep gas burning 
because insufficient daylight enters through 
the oddly placed windows. I passed over 
the long bridge which crosses the railroads 
converging here, and counted sixty-three 
sets of tracks running side by side beneath 
it. I went through some of the elegant 
apartments of the Grand Pacific Hotel, and 
for a moment interviewed one of the roy- 
ally arrayed clerks, who evidently wouldn't 
swap places with the Czar of all the Kussias. 
I looked down (as far as the smoke would 
permit) the magnificent distance of Michi- 
gan avenue — seven miles as straight as an 
arrow, and flat as a floor. I crossed the 



TO THE PACIFIC. Ig 

beautifully located but sadl}- neglected park 
just below the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad 
station, to one of the wliarves, and enjo^-ed a 
half hour on board a little excursion steamer^ 
taking in a trip around " The Pier " at an 
expense of a dime. I looked in vain 
for a transparent drop of the clay-col- 
ored waters of Lake Michigan as they 
rippled beneath the guards of the little 
steamer or rested untouched in my goblet 
at the dinner table. I paused occasion- 
ally on the street to attempt a mental 
analysis of the economy of w^ooden pave- 
ments and sidewalks of the same material. 
But I pondered longest over the fearful and 
wonderful make-up of the Chicagoan, him- 
self and herself. He, lacking the infinite 
repose of the solid and methodical Bostonian, 
as well as the resolute promptness and 
tireless activity of the representative New 
York business man, is something so thor- 
oughly American that, whether rampant or 
couchant, he has the appearance of being in 



;]^4 FROM NEW ENGLAND 

liis accomplishments a constant surprise to 
himself, as he certainly is to the slower go- 
ino; world outside. And she — what shall I 
sa}^ of her >■ In dress she adopts the fancies 
of every nation under the sun, with a pre- 
ponderance of neither ; in form and manner 
she is natural to the last degree ; in mind 
and feature prepossessing, though in unac- 
countable contrast with her local contem- 
poraries of the other sex ; and as to the 
peculiarity of her gait, it is proverbial that 
nature has been generous to the Chicago 
woman, which is all that need be said on 
that subject. 

But I am spending too much time in Chi- 
cago, without saying a word of how or why 
I happen to be here. It is my good fortune 
to be one of sixty-three New Englanders 
who, some weeks ago, decided on a junketing 
trip to Colorado and California, under the 
special charge of Mr. W. Raymond of Bos- 
ton, whose name and fame in such connec- 
tion are household words throughout the 



TO THE PACIFIC. 15 

East. In accordance with his plan, Green- 
field, Mass., was made the place of rendez- 
vous, and on the evening of Thursday, April 
twenty-fourth, the sixty odd gentlemen and 
ladies made successful departure from that 
place in three Pullman palace sleepers, at- 
tached to the regular Pacific Express over 
the New York, West Shore & Bufialo 
E-ailroad. Among the members of the party 
whose names you will recognize, are Mr. 
and Mrs. S. C. Andrews, Mr. and Mrs. H. 
O.' Bradley of Worcester, Mr. and Mrs. E. 
A. Merriman of Meriden, Mr. and Mrs. H. 
F. Mills of Lawrence, Dr. and Mrs. C. H. 
Pinney of Derby, Mr. H. B. Shattuck and 
daughter of Lowell, Mr. A. E. Tenney of 
Providence, Mr. T. J. Whidden and son of 
Boston, and your correspondent of Hart- 
ford. Mr. Max Peidler of Boston, one of 
Messrs. Prang & Go's well-known artists, is 
also among the party, and has afforded us 
no small degi'ee of pleasure by his happy 
portraits and caricatures of the excursionists 



16 FROM NEW ENGLAND 

in their respective attitudes and habiliments. 
To many the first night's experience in a 
sleeping car was a novelty, and tlie prepa- 
rations for retiring were, perhaps, less com- 
plete than they would have been under 
other circumstances. In general, however, 
the situation was accepted philosophically, 
and subsecpient events have shown how 
easily one may accustom himself or herself 
to what has seemed unpleasant in anticipa- 
tion, after once the inauguration is over. Our 
full train consisted of fourteen Pullman 
cars, and the route, as far as Eutfalo, was 
near to and parallel with the ]N"ew York Cen- 
tral tfe Erie Canal. Meals w^ere provided » 
generally, on itinerary time, at hotels, 
restaurants, or in the company's dining-cars, 
and thus far the trip has been very comfort- 
ably made, and without any unexpected or 
unpleasant occurrence. The time has been 
principally occupied by the excursionists in 
becoming well acquainted w^ith one another, 
in which pleasant exercise we have the val- 



TO THE PACIFIC. 17 

liable and gracefully rendered aid of onr 
chief, Mr. Raymond. We reached this city 
Saturday noon, and are very acceptably 
quartered at the Sherman House. Eleven 
o'clock to-morrow morning is the hour as- 
signed for resuming our journey, of which I 
hope to give you further account in due 
time. 



18 FROM NEW ENGLAND 



ir. 

Feom Chicago to Colorado — Historical 
Ground — The Plains and Dugouts — Pueblo 
— The Rockies — Pike's Peak — Manitou and 
its Wonderful Surroundings. 

Manitou, Col., May 1st. 
The Raymond Excursion Party reached 
this point last evening, having made two 
thousand two hundred and twenty miles 
of its westward journey from Boston. To 
proceed chronologically with these notes of 
our trip, I should say that we left Chicago 
on Monday morning, over the Chicago, Kock 
Island & Pacific Railway, making our first 
stop at Joliet. Here are the extensive quar- 
ries which furnish Chicago w^ith its building 
stone and flaggings. The State penal insti- 
tutions are also located here. La Salle, 



TO THE PACIFIC. 19 

with its coal mines, tile factories, and great 
zinc works, attracted attention, but there 
was little else of note until, at Moline, our 
train suddenly rolled up alongside the Miss- 
issippi, and five minutes later we were 
crossing the immense double bridge which 
connects Illinois with Iowa. This was my 
first view of the father of American rivers. 
The stream here is divided by Rock Island, 
upon which are situated the United States 
arsenal and machine shops, which were de- 
signed to constitute the central and princi- 
pal government depot of supplies and muni- 
tions of war. The wider and navigable 
portion of the stream is on the west of the 
island, and from shore to shore the distance 
is a trifle over a mile. More than an hour 
was given us in Davenport, which time was 
occupied by most of the party in a cursor}^ 
examination of this steady-going city, noted 
chiefly for being the place where was com- 
pleted the compact with the Indians which 
opened up Illinois, Iowa, and Wisconsin to 



20 FROM NEW ENGLAND 

white settlement. During the night we had 
opportunity to observe a prairie fre some 
miles southward. Tuesday morning found 
us at Kansas City, which lies at the junction 
of the Missouri and Kansas or "Kaw^^ 
Rivers. The "Big Muddy" was something 
of a surprise in its evident inferiority to the 
Mississippi. 

We dined at Topeka, having passed 
through Lawrence, leaving Leavenworth 
and Atchison at the north of us. This is 
historical ground, and the familiar names of 
localities in this part of Kansas brought 
vividly to mind the times and events of 
Missouri border ruffians, and of " old John 
Brown," before the inauguration of the 
war of the Rebellion. At Carbondale our 
heavy train was " stalled " for a few min- 
utes on a steep grade, giving us opportuni- 
ty to observe the numerous coal mines. 
Strata of bituminous coal underlie all this 
part of Kansas at a depth of from two to 
twenty feet. The natives state that in 



TO THE PACIFIC. 21 

some places the farmers come upon the upper 
stratum in plowing for their crops. For the 
next three hundred miles the road lies 
through a region of rich, black bottom lands, 
in which are wheat fields and corn fields 
covering thousands upon thousands of acres, 
all flat and wet and black, scarcely any other 
animal to be seen than the universal and 
inevitable black hog, dirty and repulsive to 
the last degree. Occasional orchards show that 
fruit may be made to grow, but as a rule 
these lands are treeless. The farm-houses 
are generally one-story huts ; there are next 
to no. roads, and very few fences. Western 
Kansas, in striking contrast with that por- 
tion just passed over, is dry and well-nigh 
barren. Thorough desolation seems to mark 
our route for thirty hours, or almost up to 
Pueblo in Colorado, full five hundred miles. 
On both sides the view to the horizon is un- 
broken by tree, or shrub, or hillock, and the 
sandy surface shows only occasional patches 
of the short buffalo-grass to furnish any- 



22 FROM sNEW ENGLAND 

thing like grazing for the cattle which roam 
over it. Sage brush of a few inches 
growth, prickly pear scarce showing above 
the sand, and the bayonet grass in little 
green shoots, are the only evidences of veg- 
etable life observable. The great want is 
water. Where irrigation is introduced, 
there springs an oasis. Occasionallj^ a slug- 
gish stream meanders across the plains, and 
its course is always marked by the millions 
of cattle grazing upon its banks, dotting the 
plain in line of the w^atercourse as far as the 
eye can see. Underlying these plains, at a 
depth of but a few feet, is a table of lime- 
stone, and immediately beneath that is 
" water, water everywhere." By boring the 
eai-th to a depth of eight or ten feet, 
anywhere within twenty miles of the 
Arkansas Kiver, abundant water is found, 
but there is no pressure to bring it to the 
surface. 

Aubrey, where the train stops for water, is 
a little village of " dugouts," or holes in the 



TO THE PACIFIC. 23 

earth strongly resembling a receiving-tomb 
in a Kew England country cemetery. Prob- 
ably twenty of these burrows serve to con- 
stitute the places of abode of the one hun- 
dred inhabitants of Aubrey. I sought to 
enter one of these dugouts, approaching the 
door, the upper half of which was glazed, 
and curtained with a dirty red cotton pocket 
handkerchief. There was neither latch nor 
handle, knob nor knocker visible, and the 
place seemed to be deserted. Pressing 
against the door, it failed to yield, but the 
slight noise occasioned a commotion within, 
and with a sudden movement the red hand- 
kerchief was jerked aside, revealing against 
the glass the gaunt visage of a woman. 
She gazed for an instant, then dropped the 
curtain and retreated with such precipitancy, 
shouting " Murder ! " at the top of her 
voice, that I was only too glad to be with 
ecpial precipitancy summoned back to the 
train by the ringing of the locomotive bell, 
without continuing my investigations. 



24 FROM NEW ENGLAND 

We overtook occasional emigrant wagons, 
in clusters of three or four, all going west- 
ward. They look just as they have been a 
thousand times pictured. Flocks of sheep, 
without a shepherd, including apparently 
uncounted thousands, nibble unconcernedly 
wherever there is herbage to attract them. 
Who can shear them, in this vast plain 
where there is not one inhabitant to a square 
mile! Thousands of timid little prairie 
dogs pop up their heads, and as suddenly 
subside within their burrows as the train 
rushes through the midst of their quiet colo- 
nies. I find that this land belongs to Uncle 
Sam. It is quoted at one dollar and twenty- 
five cents per acre. It seems strange that 
anyl^ody should want it at any price. 

We breakfast, Wednesday, at Coolidge, 
the westernmost station in Kansas, and the 
location of the railroad company's repair 
shops. It is a little gem of a place, as vil- 
lages go in this part of the country. West 
of Coolidge extend the alkaline plains. 



TO THE PACIFIC. 25 

white as snow, in tlie midst of which is Fort 
Lyon, where Kit Carson was buried. His 
monument is in sight of us, by the river, 
surrounded by cottonwoods. Beside the 
government buildings here are no other 
habitations than half a dozen adobe or mud 
hnts and a few barracks, dropped down by 
the railroad station, amid the desolations of 
a Colorado desert. 

Fifty miles farther on we come in sight of 
the Spanish Peaks of the Rocky Mountains, 
with their snowy sides and summits. They 
look to be twelve or fifteen miles away, and 
members of the party fall to disputing about 
the distance between them and us. We con- 
sult authority and find it to be seventy miles 
as the crow flies. Shortly we reach Pueblo, 
the third city in Colorado in point of size 
and importance. To our great gratification 
a halt of two hours is ordered here, and 
after a substantial dinner we are taken in 
charge by the Pueblo Board of Trade, who 
treat us to a side excursion to the great 



26 FROM NEW ENGLAND 

smelting works of the Colorado Coal and 
Iron Company, give iis all a carriage drive 
about their thrifty and attractive city, and 
othervv^ise entertain and lionize ns in the 
most approved style. Your correspondent 
is under special obligation to his honor 
Mayor Shireman and to President Adams 
of the Board of Trade, for personal atten- 
tions received from each. I could give you 
a variety of interesting statistics concerning 
the Coal and Iron Company, and the City 
of Pueblo, but must content myself with 
saying that this young western city is head 
and shoulders above many an eastern town 
that I know of, in all that goes to constitute 
commercial greatness or to make one hope- 
ful for its future. 

Resuming our places in the cars, the party 
were soon on the way to Manitou, fifty miles 
distant, arriving at the Manitou House just 
after eight in the evening. The village is 
composed chiefly of hotels and a few private 
residences, with stores, churches, shops, and 



TO THE PACIFIC. 2T 

a fine Lathing establishment. Its permanent 
population numbers but a few hundreds, yet 
its hotels are said to entertain fifty thousand 
visitors yearly. A company of Boston capi- 
talists have purchased a large tract of land 
here, and are erecting or have completed 
about fift}^ elegant cottages at various advan- 
tageous points, with bathing-houses, drink- 
ing-houses at the springs, and sundry other 
accessions which will have a certain ten- 
dency to make this resort ultimately the 
Saratoga of the west. 

The springs are about a dozen in number. 
They are principally soda and iron, and 
their medicinal qualities are such as to give 
them wide repute. Manitou is six thou- 
sand three hundred and fifty-seven feet 
above the sea. The village is immediately 
surrounded by mountains, a dozen promi- 
nent peaks being in view from my window 
as I write — the highest being Pike's Peak,, 
fourteen thousand three hundred and thirty- 
six feet above the sea. These mountains- 



28. FROM NEW ENGLAND 

are nearly all covered witli snow, and the 
view is one of unsurpassed grandeur and 
snblimity. Pike's Peak looms up amid the 
clouds like a monument of alabaster, reflect- 
ing the sun's rays and producing an impres- 
sion of sublime beauty upon the beholder 
which is absolutely impossible of adequate 
-description. 

Nearly every member of our party joined 
this morning in an excursion by carriages 
to some of the chief places of interest in 
this immediate vicinity, including the Gar- 
den of the Gods, Glen Eyrie, Mushroom 
Park, the Kainbow Falls, the Ute Iron 
Springs, Williams Canon, and the Cave of 
the Winds. The Garden of the Gods is 
considered the most wonderful of all, al- 
though I found the surroundings of Pain- 
bow Falls and Williams Canon scarcely less 
w^onderful or impressive. Tlie mountains 
and canons and gorges of Manitou I can 
only think of in comparison or contrast with 
-our own White Mountain scenery, which 



TO THE PACIFIC. 29 

latter is, I must confess, so far eclipsed by 
what I have seen here, as to leave of them 
for me only a sad memory. The other won- 
ders of sandstone turrets and domes and 
fantastic rock-forms rising abruptly four or 
five hundred feet, and scattered like senti- 
nels about the plains at the feet of these 
mountains, and within these broad canons, 
are comparable to nothing I have heretofore 
seen, and they exceed in their grotesqueness 
and sublimity the ideal which my imagina- 
tion had constructed. We start to-morrow 
morning for a two days' trip to Denver, and 
among the gold mines of Gilpin County ; 
but I am in love with Manitou, and happy in 
the thought that two whole daj^s of next 
week will be allowed us for a further explora- 
tion of the wonderful and beautiful objects 
and localities with which this region abounds. 
I have just spoken of the White Mountains. 
My recollection is that the summit of Mount 
Washington is scarce six thousand feet high. 
The lowest spot in this village is over six 



30 FROM NEW ENGLAND 

thousand feet, and Pike's Peak towers in 
front of us eiglit thousand two hundred and 
twelve feet higher still ! There is a govern- 
ment signal station at the summit of Pike's 
Peak. Yesterday a signal of distress was 
displayed at the station, and two parties 
have set out to attempt to reach and relieve 
the occupant. The snow betw^een " timber 
line " and the summit is from thirty to fifty 
feet deep, yet with the aid of their snow- 
shoes and other appliances the rescuers 
expect to be able to reach the station within 
twenty -four hours of the start. I shall 
probably write you next from Santa F^. 



TO THE PACIFIC. 31 



III. 

In and About Denver — Silver Mining ond 
Smelting — Up Clear Greek Gulch — Gentral 
City and its Mines — Elevated Railroading — 
Golorado Springs. 

Colorado Springs, Col., May 4. 
Friday and Saturday, May second and 
third, were assigned for a visit to Denver 
and the mining regions northwest up Clear 
Creek fifty miles into the heart of the 
Kockies of Jefferson and Gilpin Counties. 
On the morning of Friday we left Manitou, 
bright and early, and before noon had cov- 
ered the eighty-odd miles intervening be- 
tween our starting point and the Queen 
City. We approached Denver by the way 
of Jewel Park, bisecting the familiar " Cir- 
cle Eoad " in which your late Governor 



32 FROM NEW ENGLAND 

Jewell was once financially interested. Tlie 
city is spread out over the plains at the foot 
of the everlasting hills, both Pike's Peak, at 
the south, and Long's Peak, at the north, 
being within easy view. The people of 
Denver have a right to be, as they are, 
very proud of their city. It is said to con- 
tain sixty thousand inhabitants. Its streets 
are broad, and, though not paved, do not 
appear to be subject to the annoyance of 
mud or excessive roughness. Broadway ex- 
tends thirteen miles, from north to south, 
within the city limits, straight and level. It 
is illuminated by night by electric lights 
from several towers in different portions of 
the city, these towers being two hundred feet 
high, and each having a cluster of twelve 
burners. Even in the business portions of 
the city, and particularly on those streets 
where the homes of the people are situated, 
there is an air and appearance of cleanliness 
and sweetness, as well as of elegance and 
luxury, which is in striking contrast with 



TO THE PACJF/C. 33 

most cities of its magnitude. East or West. 
Outside the very heart of the city, the 
streets are all lined with cottonwoods and 
maples, and the lawns and gardens abound 
with fruit trees, whose growth is made possi- 
ble only by the system of irrigation which 
brings the waters of the Platte into the city 
by canals and distributes them through 
every street. Little rivulets thus fill the 
gutters, cooling the atmosphere, penetrating 
the thirsty earth, and giving vigor to every 
variety of vegetation within reach of its 
moisture. Numerous artesian wells supply 
pure and healthful water for domestic pur- 
poses. 

The architecture of Denver is its most 
impressive characteristic. This feature shows 
itself as the visitor alights from the railroad 
train and iinds confronting him the stately 
"Union Depot," built of pink and white 
sandstone, a marvel of elegance and com- 
pleteness, one of the very largest and finest 
railroad stations in America. Other con- 

3 



34 FROM NEW ENGLAND 

spicuous edifices are the Tabor Opera House, 
said to be the finest opera house in the 
country, the Windsor and St. James Hotels 
(at the latter of which the Raymond Excur- 
sion Party were quartered), the Court 
House and City Hall, Tabor Block, La Yeta 
Palace, the Exposition Building, Colorado 
National Bank Block, St. John's Cathedral, 
etc. On Capitol Hill are a large number of 
elegant private residences. There are said 
to be over a hundred of these which cost 
more than eighty thousand dollars each. 
The prevailing building material is brick, 
although the most expensive structures are 
of the beautiful pink and salmon tinted 
sandstone, a material which produces the 
very choicest eft'ects in the hands of a tasty 
and skillful architect. Here are no less 
than fifty-four churches and thirty-three in- 
stitutions of learning, which fairly indicates 
the character and intellectual inclinations of 
the people. The city and its suburbs are 
brought into proximity by numerous lines 



TO THE PACIFIC. 35 

of street cars and narrow-gauge railroads ; 
the telephone is here ; so is the district 
messenger service. There are four daily 
newspapers, and each appears to be well 
conducted and liberally sustained. Indeed, 
the city has all modern improvements and 
advantages possessed by any other city on 
the continent. Almost the sole business of 
its inhabitants is mining. Strangers have 
come here from every portion of the coun- 
try, have found fortunes in the mountains 
or adjoining plains, have spent their money 
here, and the result is — simply Denver ; and 
there is no other Denver in the world. 

The Connecticut members of the party 
spent an hour at the extensive works of the 
Boston and Colorado Smelting Company, 
owned by Boston capital and officered, 
mainly, by IN'ew England men. We had 
the satisfaction of observing every operation 
required in reducing rough quartz to retined 
gold and silver, and of bringing away some 
handsome specimens of the linished product 



36 FROM NEW ENGLAND 

of the establishment. Among the inter- 
esting objects seen in the relining-room 
were twentj-one pure silver bricks, just 
" poured," worth two thousand three hun- 
dred dollars each ; and a great tank in 
which reposed one hundred and fifty thous- 
and dollars worth of " sponge silver " await- 
ing the roaster. The annual product of 
these smelting works is about four million 
dollars of silver, two million dollars of gold, 
and one million dollars of copper. 

Having seen, in Denver, something of 
what wealth in gold and silver may accom- 
plish, we were ready, Saturday morning, 
for a trip among some of the hiding-places 
of the precious metals in their crude and 
original form. Our destination was Black 
Hawk and Central City, forty miles up 
the ''Wonder Railroad," as this narrow 
gauge branch of the Colorado Central Hall- 
way is very appropriately styled. Sixteen 
miles away we reach Golden, which lies at 
the base of the Rocky Mountain foot-hills. 



TO THE PACIFIC. 37 

At Golden we enter Clear Creek Gulch, 
and begin the twenty -six mile climb which 
will terminate at Central City, three thous- 
and feet nearer heaven. Clear Creek, as it 
emerges from, the gulch or gorge which 
bears its name, is a rushing, roaring stream, 
of about the volume of your Park River 
before the spring freshet has fairly subsided. 
It may have been " clear" when first named, 
but the constant disturbance of the soil by 
miners along its bed, and the discharges of 
tons and tons of crushed sandstone and 
.limestone quartz into it daily, have brought 
the stream to about the consistency and 
color of a regulation dose of calomel and 
jalap. In the shallow portions of this 
stream, all the way up to Black Hawk, may 
be seen hundreds of Chinamen, wearing 
high rubber boots, washing for gold. Some 
of them erect long, narrow flumes, or 
sluices, through which little streams of 
water are made to run less rapidly than in 
the river-bed. Minute particles of gold and 



38 FROM NEW ENGLAND 

silver in the water are thus deposited on 
the bottom of the sluice, and once a week, 
or oftener, the little stream is shut off, and 
the bottom of the sluice is washed for the 
precious metals. The natives tell us that 
the soil up and down the bed of this creek 
has been handled over and over again with- 
in the last thirty years, but it still yields 
something. Even after so many washings, 
the Chinamen find from two to five 
dollars a day. The race are natural 
scavengers, and better satisfied to wade 
the streams for "tailings" than to labor for^ 
wages in the mines above. Occasionally 
we pass men working with pick or spade in 
the mountain side, digging little holes here 
and there, wherever earth shows itself 
amono; the rocks. These are surface min- 
ers, and their tedious labor is occasionally 
rewarded by a "find." We were shown a 
pint or more of gold nuggets at one of the 
banks in Central City, varying in size from 
a buckshot to an old-fashioned copper cent, 



TO THE PACIFIC. 39 

which had been found by surface miners 
along this gulch. The banks buy the nug- 
gets and the free gold. The nuggets found 
in Clear Creek Gulch, as I presume else- 
where, are of all. conceivable shapes. I 
saw none larger than thirty-two penny- 
weights, and most of them were less than 
one-eighth that size. 

The trip up the gulch was something to 
be remembered. The railway follows the 
stream, of course, at heights varying from ten 
to fifty feet above its bed. On either hand 
the rocky mountain-sides rise more or less 
abruptly to a height of eight to twelve hun- 
dred feet, and the curves are such as would 
render progress impossible on any o1;her than 
a narrow gauge. In places the huge rocks 
actually overhang us a thousand feet above ; 
in others we leap a chasm with only a slight 
trestle between us and eternity. The trip is 
made in observation cars. Considering the 
sharp curves, and the heavy grades, and the 
constantly threateuing features of the road 



40 FROM NEW ENGLAND 

bed, the speed at wliich the train rims is 
absolutely terrific. For the first five miles I 
was in momentary expectation that my life 
insurance policies were about to become 
claims ; but somehow I managed to get 
accustomed to the apparent danger, and 
when, between Black Hawk and Central, 
the road ascends the last elevation in ziz- 
zag, I looked with serenity over the side of 
the open car to the bottom of the gulch six 
hundred feet below. These twenty -four 
miles, grooved in the sturdy foot-hills, illus- 
trate well American railway enterprise. 
Fourteen trains are run daily over the single 
track, and notwithstanding the seeming 
recklessness of management, there has never 
been a serious accident during the history of 
the road. The present terminus of this 
branch is at (Mitral City. Here our party 
dined at the Teller House, erected by and 
named in honor of Secretary of Interior 
Teller, who is a citizen of this place. His 
unostentatious residence is pointed out to the 



TO THE PACIFIC. 41 

visitor, Tlie villages of Black Hawk and 
Central City extend about a mile np the 
gulch, there being but a single street run- 
ning longitudinally, and a few short and un- 
important ones crossing. The twelve or 
fifteen hundred inhabitants are miners, rep- 
resenting the sole industry of " the camp," 
as the natives desis^nate the neio-hborhood. 
Central City proper has the post-office, the 
stores, the three banks, the newspaper, and 
the '' emporium of fashion,'^ where a lacka-' 
daisical milliner once a year fixes up the few 
bonnets that are worn or needed in this 
region of primitive tastes and accomplish- 
ments. 

As far as the eye can reach, the .surface is 
studded thick with " shafts '' of the numer- 
ous mines with which these hill-sides are 
honeycombed. The lowest level worked is 
sixteen hundred feet. The quartz is brought 
to the surface and sold to the smelters, who 
are able to tell at a glance what any lot 
oftered will yield. One of these mines 



42 FROM NEW ENGLAND 

which we visited was bought April first by 
its present owners, for one hundred thousand 
dollars. During April they took out twenty- 
nine thousand dollars. Fortunes are being 
made here, and changing hands, every 
month. The homes of the practical miners 
are unattractive, and there is little about the 
village to denote an advanced stage of civil- 
ization. Mining is not intellectually eleva- 
ting in its tendencies, any more than dig- 
ging wells or laying stone wall. Our party 
did considerable tramping, selected a few of 
the most brilliant specimens, tried to talk 
wisely to the natives, and were rather glad 
when the conductor announced that our 
train was ready. We made Denver at six 
o'clock, found an excellent supper at the sta- 
tion which detained us an hour, and at half- 
past ten were again in Manitou. 

To-day, Sunday, our Connecticut party 
visited this place from which I date. Colo- 
rado Springs has a good assortment of 
churches. "We came up here with the inten- 



TO THE PACIFIC. 4g 

tion of worshiping at the Congregational 
establishment, but finding it late for service 
when we arrived, abandoned tlie intention. 
Everybody has heard of Colorado Springs, 
but not everybody knows there isn't a spring 
in the place ; they are all at Manitou. But 
it is a very pretty and attractive village, 
though it has no springs. It has six thou- 
sand inhabitants, and its business is chiefly 
in cattle. It has a Catholic and an orthodox 
college, several stores, hotels, post-ofiice, and 
a daily newspaper. Every western village 
has a daily newspaper. I don't know why 
some of them are printed, except it may be 
to keep up the price of white paper. Colorado 
Springs has several of those beautiful pink 
and salmon colored stone buildings which 
attracted my admiration at Denver. They 
tell me here the stone is not limestone or 
sandstone, but lava. I don't care by what 
name it is called ; it is the finest building 
material in the world, with or without a 
name. 



44 FROM NEW ENGLAND 

We shall spend Monday in Maniton, and 
leave Tuesday morning for a three days' trip 
among the mountains, taking in Marshall 
Pass, Leadville, and the La Yeta Pass, 
€xpecting to arrive at El Moro on Thursday, 
Mav eio-hth. 



TO THE PACIFIC. 45 



Up Among and Over the Rockies — Good 
Bye to Manitou — Royal George and Mar- 
shall Pass — The Sriow Sheds — A Night at 
Sargent — Leadvdle on Both Sides — Veta 
Pass — Las Vegas Hot Springs — A Tribute 
to Rayriiond. 

In Transit, Kear Santa Fe, N. M., May 9. 

Four days and three nights in a narrow- 
gauge sleeping-car will occasionally test the 
good nature of as suave an individual as 
your humble servant. Our family of twenty 
in this particular car is composed of gentle- 
men and ladies in about equal numbers, 
with relations of kinship subsisting between 
but a portion of them. They all want to 
get up and dress at about the same moment 
in the morning ; the dressing-room accom- 



46 FROM NEW ENGLAND 

modations are adapted for but a single occu- 
pant at a time ; and the average passenger 
feels obliojed to wrio^^rle into some sort of 
wearing apparel while yet in his berth, and 
before he appears even in the passage-way. 
That disrobing or enrobing, or observing the 
various conventionalities of polite society in 
these little toy houses on wheels, is with us 
or anybody a happy success, must be due to 
great good nature and forbearance on the 
part of all concerned. But I am glad to 
have had the experience, for while it has 
furnished additional evidence that " variety 
is the spice of life," it has also exhibited 
features in the funny side of railroading 
which none of us would now wish to have 
obliterated. Henceforward, from Santa Fe 
to the Pacific Coast, we travel on the broad- 
gauge Pullmans in which w^e left Boston. 

My last letter was dated from Manitou, as 
our party was about leaving* for its four 
days' excursion among the chief scenic won- 
ders of the Colorado Rockies. Before 



TO THE PACIFIC. 47 

leaving Manitou for good I cannot repress 
an allusion to the last half day spent there 
in visiting Williams Canon and its ultimate 
attraction, the famous Cave of the Winds. 
The canon itself is one of the most remark- 
able among the stupendous gorges of Colo- 
rado. The cavern is located three-quarters 
of a mile up this gorge, and its entrance is 
at the foot of a broad fissure in the cliff, per- 
haps three hundred feet above the trail. 
Registering our names, and paying each his 
admission fee of one dollar, the guide 
assisted us in donnino; loose outside orar- 
ments, handed us lighted candles, and, un- 
der his lead, we proceeded up-stairs, down- 
stairs, through broad halls and wide cham- 
bers, and tortuous passages, upward of a 
mile into the bowels of the earth. Stalac- 
tites and stalagmites, in great profusion and 
beauty, met our admiring gaze in every 
direction. We stopped here and there to 
rest, and linger delightedly in the " bridal 
chamber," which is the acme of all and the 



48 FROM NEW ENGLAND 

holy of holies of this temple not made with 
hands. The guide cautions us to touch not, 
with appropriating hands, one of the least 
of the ten thousand stalactites which de- 
pend from the ceilings, or of the glistening 
and delicate fretwork which, in fantastic 
forms, adorns the walls of this brilliant 
chamber. When, however, we complete 
our explorations, and have returned to the 
welcome sunlight and purer atmosphere of 
the outside world, it astonishes us to tind 
for how slight a recompense in coin of the 
realm the sordid cave-owner is induced to 
part with sundry specimens of the very 
things we had coveted while w^e roamed 
among them under the censorship of his hire- 
ling. We had not given the Williams Caiion 
and its cave much thought while selecting 
from among the attractions of Manitou's 
suburbs the objective points for our rides and 
tramps, and the brief visit here alluded to was 
in the best sense accidental. But let me say, 
in passing, that the tourist who bids good- 



TO THE PACIFIC. 49 

bye to Maniton, liaving failed to take in the 
Cave of the Winds, makes a mistake forever 
to be regretted. 

Tuesday morning we deposited ourselves 
in three of the cosiest of the cosy little 
sleepers of the Denver & Rio Grande Rail- 
way — narrow gauge — with an observation 
car attached, and started for El Moro, via 
the Royal Gorge, Marshall Pass, Leadville, 
and La Yeta. That we mio-ht be unencnm- 
bered to the last degree, our trunks were 
forwarded, by express, direct to Santa Fe ; 
the wisdom of wliich arrangement became 
increasingly apparent as we observed tlie 
small opportunity Ivhich these cars afforded 
for utilizing such luxuries as fresh linen or 
a change of head-gear. [I speak of capital 
adornment because that in my anxiety to 
appear well before the natives of Green 
Horn, Puker's Pass, and other metropole 
where our train might stop for refreshments, 
I took along my plug hat, one of Watrous's 
best, and new a day or two before leaving 

4 



50 FROM NEW ENGLAND 

Hartford. Tlie very first night our admir- 
able porter toolv pains to hang my tile on a 
hat-hook in such position that when he un- 
shipped the upper bunk nearest it, the hat 
received an irreparable injury. I left it 
hanging upon a section post about three 
miles west of Salida, having taking the pre- 
caution to turn it inside out so that the 
maker's label might. serve Watrous as an 
advertisement. As a consequence of this 
untimely episode I appear before the natives 
on dress parade in fatigue uniform, as plug 
hats are not to be had this side of San 
Francisco. The incident conveys a moral : 
Do not wear a stovepipe hat when you go 
West.] 

The " Gr^d Canon of the Arkansas," of 
which the supreme portion is known as 
Royal Gorge, extends ten miles above Canon 
City, Its walls are high and precipitous, 
composed mainly of solid rock. Its princi- 
pal features are similar to those of Williams 
Canon, but infinitely more grand and impos- 



TO THE pacific: 51 

ing, and it has the added charm of a turbu- 
lent stream — the Arkansas River — tearing 
and tumbling among the boulders at the 
bottom of the gorge. The railroad, as at 
Clear Creek, follows the stream about fifty 
feet above its bed. At Royal Gorge, a 
bridge has actually been builded out from a 
projecting rock, supported by iron rafters in 
the form of an inverted Y above it. The 
train is brought to a halt on this bridge, the 
party leave the cars and group themselves 
upon the causeway, where several stereo- 
scopic views are taken, with the ledges in 
the background lifting their granite walls 
more than two thousand feet above. All 
through this canon there are crevasses or 
rifts in the rocky sides, through which we 
catch bewitching glimpses of the Sange de 
Christo range of the Rockies, with Mount 
Ouray towering white and grand and beau- 
tiful, fourteen thousand and twenty-three 
feet above the level of the sea. 

An easy run of an hour and a half brings 



52 FROM NEW ENGLAND 

US to Salida, a place of some importaneey 
and just now conspicuous on account of a 
recent discovery of gold and silver bearing 
leads in the hills one to three miles from the 
railroad station. The Salida mine is the 
most promising, specimens being shown us 
of ore from it which assayed five hundred 
and twenty dollars to the ton. The town 
was alive with strangers, evidently attracted 
thither by the new find. Salida has a pop- 
ulation of about five thousand. All branches 
of trade seem to flourish there — particularly 
the gin business, it requiring fifty-three 
liquor shops and drug stores to supply the 
demand. With a few honorable exceptions 
the people appear to be of a vagabond class, 
living upon one another, and waiting for 
new contributions from outside to enable 
them to maintain the dignity and profit of 
their calling. And yet these wretches have 
the assurance to insist that there is nothing 
left of ]^ew England but a few decrepit old 
men and women, and to express their sym- 



TO THE PACIFIC. 53 

pat by for oar party as forlorn representa- 
tives of a section of country whose great- 
ness has entirely departed! The best thing 
observed in Salida was the dinner served for 
us at the station dining-rooms. 

At three forty-live p. m. we commenced 
the ascent of the spurs of Mount Ouray, on 
our way to Marshall Pass. This Pass is ten 
thousand seven hundred and twenty-five 
feet above the sea, and constitutes the divid- 
ing line between the Eastern and Pacific 
slopes of the Rocky Mountains. It is 
readied by a complex system of curves, the 
railroad doubling on itself no less than six 
times in making the ascent. As we ad- 
vance up the mountain side the situation be- 
comes grand and impressive beyond descrip- 
tion. Hundreds of snow-covered peaks all 
about us come into clearer view above and 
below the fleecy clouds which toy and 
tremble and dissolve among the distant 
summits. As the train slowly creeps up the 
incline, new and deeper abysses constantly 



54 FROM NEW ENGLAND 

appal us on the one hand, while on the 
other the majestic heights scarcely diminish. 
We behold and wonder, and stand awed as 
if in the immediate presence of Omnipo- 
tence. We seem to be leaving things 
earthy, and advancing so surely toward the 
heavenly, that it is scarcely less than a dis- 
appointment when the train plunges into a 
cavernous snow-shed and the illusion is dis- 
pelled. But onward and upward the pon- 
derous sixty-ton locomotive drags us, until, 
almost within hailing distance of the sum- 
mit of Ouray, we come to a halt on the 
crest of the divide. This is Marshall Pass, 
almost eleven thousand feet above the sea, 
with perhaps a single exception the lofti- 
est railway point in the world. Tlie train 
waits here in the darkness a few minutes 
while the excursionists dismount and at- 
tempt to reconnoitre. I say " in the dark- 
ness," for you must bear in mind that at this 
point and all about us the snow is from ten to 
fifty feet deep ; and Marshall Pass Station is 



rO THE PACIFIC. 55 

a snow-shed nearly or quite a mile in length. 
On one side the shed abuts against the 
mountain ; in the opposite side are occasion- 
al windows, which admit a few rays of light 
at intervals, and allow us another glance at 
the depths below or heights above and about 
us. We have obeyed the admonition of 
our conductor before reaching this great 
elevation, and stand in one another's pres- 
ence in such mufflings and wrappings as 
each can command, and are not anxious to 
remain long outside the warm cars. A few 
of us step into the little telegraph office 
and interview the operator, who is a lady. 
She declines to accept the commiserations 
freely extended, and evidently considers her 
lot a happy one. She is forty and unmar- 
ried — which explains the situation. The 
railroad goes on over the Pass and down the 
west side of the mountain, this being the 
main line of connection with the Southern 
Pacific. We followed it as far as Sargent, 
where we took supper and lodgings. It is. 



56 FROM NEW ENGLAND 

perhaps, enough to record of this enterpris- 
ing village, that none of its inhabitants 
went gunning among our party during the 
night, which good fortune on our part was 
at the time considered providential. It 
afterward transpired that an escaping horse- 
thief received their individual attention. 
We left Sargent Wednesday morning, re- 
tracing our way over the Pass to Salida, 
from which latter point we proceeded 
directly to Leadville, reaching that famous 
locality at three o'clock in the afternoon. 
The sixty miles between Salida and Lead- 
ville afford little of note. Occasional vil- 
lages of a few hundred inhabitants put in 
an appearance, but they are all essentially 
alike; a few little one-story, dingy -yellow 
or wood-colored buildings, with now and 
then a more pretentious one ; a few men 
loitering about in beggarly costume, with 
slouch hats, and pants stuffed in their boot- 
legs ; a few burros meeklj^ bearing their 
burdens ; a few charcoal pits ; and a few 



TO THE PACIFIC. 57 

millions of acres of barren land surround- 
ing ; this will answer for a description of 
any or all of them. There is the magnifi- 
cent mountain scenery all the time, and 
the delighfnl climate ; the rest is poor 
enough. 

But there is nothing monotonous or simi- 
lar about Leadville. Leadville is unique. 
Let us be thankful for it. Perhaps I 
should remind you of its early history. 
The locality was first famous as '* California 
Gulch," where, from 1859 to 1864, five mil- 
lion dollars of gold was washed out. The 
camp was afterward nearly abandoned, till 
during 1876 the discovery of carbonates 
was made, which led to a sudden influx of 
population. In February, 1878, the town 
of Leadville was organized, and two years 
later the city of the same name was incor- 
porated with a population of fifteen thous- 
and one hundred and eighty-five, of whom 
only three thousand seven hundred and 
forty-nine were females. This great car- 



58 FROM NEW ENGLAND 

bonate camp of Colorado is said to be the 
richest mining district in the world. The 
product of bullion has increased from year 
to year, until in 1882 it exceeded eighteen 
million dollars. For a reason which I think 
will be apparent to a critical observer of 
its brief history, the population has grad- 
ually fallen off, until at present it is but 
about twelve thousand ; and I suppose that 
the proportion of females is even sTualler 
than when the census of 1880 was taken. 
The principal business institutions are six 
banks, fifteen smelting and reduction works, 
four foundries and machine shops, water 
works, gas works, lumber yards, stores, etc. 
There are three daily papers, schools, 
churches, hotels, etc. The number of mines 
within a radius of three miles of the city, 
is said to be upwards of two hundred, in 
many of which there are two and three re- 
lays of hands, so that work is kept up 
twenty-four hours of every day in the year. 
Leadville is ten thousand feet above the 



TO THE PACIFTC. 59 

level of the sea, and the climate is abso- 
lutely unapproachable for salubrity and 
healthfulness. These are statistics which 
the historian naturally seeks, and such a& 
you might expect me to collect and record 
during a brief tarry in the city. 

You will fail of receiving a correct impres- 
sion of Leadville, however, if I fail to make 
some further statements. And first in re- 
spect to gambling, which in its various forms 
is practiced there openly and by sanction of 
law. There are in this city of twelve thousand 
inhabitants upwards of thirty public gam- 
bling houses, which pay a revenue to the city 
of about one hundred thousand dollars per 
year. Every hotel has one, and some as 
many as six tables. The Board of Trade, 
which is a flourishing institution and owns 
its three-story brick block on the principal 
street of the city, is but a huge gaming 
house with all the modern appointments 
and conveniences. Its manager was for- 
merly a resident of your city. I spent an. 



^0 FROM NEW ENGLAND 

lioiir at his office in very agreeable conver- 
sation relative to Hartford men and alFairs. 
I visited one of the high-toned faro-banks 
at tlie corner of West Chestnut street, the 
proprietor of which is an alderman of the 
city, and was once a well-known citizen 
of Connecticut. At some other time I will 
give you their names. "Pap" Wyman, 
who used to drive his well-r^nembered 
four-horse silk wagon through Connecti- 
cut and Massachusetts, keeps a gambling 
resort and bar at the head of State street. 
He has an open quarto bible, well worn, on 
a handsome stand in a conspicuous place 
near the entrance ; and above the bar, iu 
bold gilt letters, is the legend "Please do 
not swear." The half dozen places which 
I visited were crowded with patrons. Every- 
body gambles ; it is unquestionably the 
principal business of the city. Three men 
preside at every table and conduct the 
game. Of these one seems to be the dicta- 
tor or referee. He occupies an elevated 



TO THE PACIFIC. Q\ 

position above the otlier?, and intently 
watches tlie movements of the cards and 
the disposition of the " cliips." Young 
men and old were playing, some whose soft 
hands indicated that they were unused to 
manual labor, and many who were evidently 
just in from the mines. They surged in 
from the streets and waited for places at the 
tables ; indeed there never seemed to be any 
cessation in the play. 

In addition to these legalized gambling 
hells, the city has three variety theaters and 
any number of dance-halls. There are six 
hundred licensed prostitutes in the city, each 
of whom pays live dollars per month into the 
treasury. Vice in its worst and lowest and 
most repulsive forms not only stalks unre- 
buked, but is nursed and fostered as a chief 
source of public revenue. One of the city 
officials, who gave me this information, also 
assured me that the enormous city taxes of 
more than three cents on the dollar were 
actually reduced to but five or six mills by 



^2 FROM NEW ENGLAND 

the revenue derived from licensed card 
tables, roulette tables, billiard tables, bars, 
theaters, saloons, dance-halls, and prosti- 
tutes ! 

Such is Leadville — the richest mining city 
in the world, but in its moral aspect decid- 
edly the most degraded and hopeless. To 
one reared among the stern virtues of New 
England society, and the robust restraints of 
New England laws, the very atmosphere of 
Leadville seems to carry the taint of hell. 
No Sabbath, no God, the home a brotliel, the 
chief inhabitants gamblers and prostitutes 
— what a place has the mammon of gold 
wrought out and set up to attract the young 
men of the east who would " make haste to 
be rich ! " We shake the dust from our feet 
and leave Leadville under the friendly shel- 
ter of darkness. It is enough. 

Thursday morning finds us back at Pueblo, 
one hundred and sixty miles from Leadville, 
at breakfast. At twelve we dine at La 
Yeta, another hundred miles southwest. 



TO THE PACIFIC. 63 

under the shadow of the foothills of the 
Sangre de Christo range. At two p. m. we 
are at Yeta Pass, our ultimate destination 
on this supplementary trip. This pass, 
through which the Denver & Rio Grande 
Road gets over Dump Mountain at an eleva- 
tion of nine thousand three hundred and 
forty feet, is scarcely less grand or beauti- 
ful in its scenic effects than Marshall Pass, 
already described, although at an altitude 
less by nearly one thousand five hundred 
feet. Some of the grades are actually 
heavier, its curves sharper, and its approach- 
es more precipitous. In reaching its sum- 
mit we travel fifteen miles from the valley, 
whereas to reach the summit of Marshall 
Pass we make a run of twenty-five miles 
from Salida, where the grade begins. ^N'one 
of this party will be likely to forget the 
delightful trip which occupied the afternoon 
of Thursday. The weather was perfect; 
every inch of the ride up the mountain was 
a panorama ; the half hour at the summit 



g4 FROM NEW ENGLAND 

was a picnic, and tlie taiTj at La Yeta on 
the return was a happy ending of a glorious 
day. I shall be derelict in duty if I fail to 
make acknowledgment of the efforts of our 
indefatigable manager, Mr. Raymond, to 
amuse and entertain his party at La Yeta, 
w^hether by his pleasing performance on the 
little w^iite burro, his violin concert at the 
La Yeta Hotel, or as leader of the inimita- 
ble quartette at a later hour on the sleeper. 
These little incidents are of not much 
account to the outside world, but their 
mention will doubtless prove a pleasant 
reminder to the Raymond Party. 

Friday morning we were aroused at five 
o'clock, to change cars at El Moro half an 
hour later. El Moro has three hundred and 
fifty coke ovens. The town takes its name 
(which signifies " The Castle ") from the 
numerous rock elevations around it, each 
bearing striking resemblance to a castle or 
military fortification. We breakfasted at 
Raton, the border town of ISTew Mexico, 



rO THE PACIFIC. , g5 

having now completed onr journejings in 
Colorado. Raton is noted as the railroad 
center of the coal-minino; district of Colfax 
County. A thousand car-loads of coal can 
be produced and shipped daily from this 
point. Eighty miles southwest is Las Yegas, 
where w^e stopped for dinner. The city has 
nine thousand people. By favor of the rail- 
road company we made a detour of five miles 
to the Las Yegas Hot Springs. There are 
thirty of them. The water has a temper- 
ature of one hundred to one hundred and 
fifty degrees. Its odor and taste are such 
as to indicate the presence of rotten eggs 
near the fountain-head. Its medicinal qual- 
ities are said to be wonderful. At Las 
Yegas we met an excursion party of some- 
what more than a hundred, going East to 
Chicago and Boston, in six or seven Pull- 
man cars. Our train pushes onward, past 
Levy, over Glorietta Mountain, at one time 
in sight of the ruins of an old Pecos Pueblo 
and church, and again under the frowning 



(36 FROM NEW ENGLAND 

heights of Point Desolation, until Lamy is 
reached, eighteen miles from Santa Fe. 

And here I bringthis epistle to a close, in 
sight of the ancient city of whose quaint 
architecture and mixed population so much 
has been written. We shall remain at the 
Palace Hotel until Monday morning, and I 
hope in the interval to find material for an 
interestino^ letter. 



TO THE PACIFIC. 67 



Y. 



Deserts, Flowers, Orange Groves, Vine- 
yards — Santa Fe and its Adobes — The In- 
dians of Arizona — A Thousand Miles of 
Desert — Finally the Floivers and Oranges. 

Los Angeles, Cal., May 15th. 
I closed my last letter to The Post just 
as we were about to enter the city of Santa 
Fe. There is so little to be said of this dull 
old town that perhaps I ought to have 
waited fifteen minutes and included the 
story of it in that letter ; but since I did 
not, you will expect it now. The railroad 
station is a large half mile from the city. 
We traversed the distance in carriages — 
not on the backs of burros, the custom- 
ary conveyance. It was a genuine nov- 
elty, this ride by moonlight through the 



Qg FROM NEW ENGLAND 

narrow streets and among the adobe 
houses without any perceptible roofs, 
and into and across the swift-running 
river which courses through the heart of 
Santa Fe. For this river lias only one or 
two narrow footbridges over it, and nowhere 
a bridge that can be crossed by a horse and 
carriage. The burros ford it, and the in-, 
habitants who ride probably wouldn't get 
from one side to the other by any other pro- 
cess than fording it, if they had a dozen 
bridges. This is because their ancestors 
have done so. In Santa Fe, as in most 
other portions of l^ew Mexico, the latest 
generation always imitates the preceding 
generation in all that is possible of imita- 
tion. Flence the mud huts, innocent of the 
commonest toilet conveniences ; hence the 
iilthiness of the surroundings of the habi- 
tations of the natives ; hence the resem- 
blance between the Santa Fe of 1542 and 
the Santa F^ of 18S4. 

This is the capital city of New Mexico. Its 



TO THE PACIFIC. 69 

population is about seven thousand, of which 
fullj five thousand are Spanish and Mexi- 
cans speaking the Spanish language. It is 
the center of supplies for the surrounding 
country, and is constantly tilled with freight 
wagons and pack animals, the latter being 
almost entirely the little burros or donkeys 
commonly used throughout the Territory. 
The supply of firewood for the city is almost 
wholly brought in on their backs. The 
valley is irrigated with water from Santa 
Fe Creek, it being well known by all 
authorities on the subject that no rain ever 
falls — although there were copious and 
drenching showers on both of the two days 
of our sojourn in the city. The climate is 
most agreeable, the atmosphere rare and 
pure, as might be expected at an altitude 
of seven thousand feet. The town is irreg- 
ularly laid out, and the unpaved streets are 
narrow, crooked, and ancient-looking. The 
public square, or plaza, containing about 
two and a half acres, is bordered on three 



70 FROM NEW ENGLAND 

sides by the principal business houses,' and 
on the fourth by the old " Palace," or Gov- 
ernment building, containing the principal 
legislative chambers. The buildings are 
almost wholly of adobe, seldom more than 
one story in height. The adobe is simply 
mnd, mixed with straw or stubble, formed 
in blocks eighteen inches long, nine inches 
wide, and four inches thick, baked by the 
sun until they are hard enough to be 
handled without breaking. Just outside 
each hut is a bake-oven, hemispherical in 
form, in which the family bread is baked 
during the day, and in which the family 
dog sleeps at night. I visited several of 
these huts, and, by the aid of an interpret- 
er, succeeded in interviewing their inmates. 
Some of them are orderly and neat, as Mex- 
ican neatness goes, but they may be scented 
from afar every time. Within the town, and 
directly opposite the Palace Hotel — which 
is our home while in the city — is the mili- 
tary reservation of Fort Marcy. The stir- 



TO THE PACIFIC. 71 

ring music of its military band woke our 
party to the realization of a serenade the 
first night after our arrival. On the heights 
north of the city are the ruins of old Fort 
Marcy, built and occupied by Kearney in 
1846, when the Territory first fell under 
control of the United States. We visited 
the principal attractions of the city, namely, 
the old churches of San Miguel and Santa 
Guadaloupe, the exposition building, and 
the establishment where is manufactured 
the famous Mexican filigree jewelry. Some 
of our party took in an Indian dance at the 
Burro Exchange, while the rest of us re- 
mained at the Palace listening to Judge 
Sloan's tafiy, and laughing at Almy's little 
story of the champion liar wdio was disem- 
boweled by a panther, but survived by a 
neat transfusion trick. We parted from 
our friend and manager, Mr. Raymond, at 
Santa Fe, who placed us in charge of Mr. 
Harding from this point and returned to 
Boston to look after his White Mountain 



72 FROM NEW ENGLAND 

excursions. We i-eliictantly parted com- 
pany, also, with Mr. Bradley of Worcester, 
who with his wife was summoned by tele- 
graph to return on account of the death of 
his father. Sunday forenoon most of the 
party attended the Congregational Church, 
whose pastor is Rev. Mr. Kellogg, formerly 
of Jewett City, Conn. His pulpit was oc- 
cupied in the afternoon by the venerable 
Dr. Worcester, a member of our party of 
excursionists. Monday morning we were 
breakfasted at six o'clock, and transferred 
from the hotel to the railroad station. 
The abominable chimes of the old cathed- 
ral rang out their matin as we entered the 
transfer carriages, bade farewell to the 
hospitable Palace Hotel, and were again 
put through Santa Fe Creek at its deepest 
ford in a style which would do credit to any 
Jehu, either east or west. We made the 
station safely, and at seven o'clock resumed 
our westward journey. The route took 
us back to Lamy, and thence southwest 



TO THE PACIFIC. 73 

over the A., T. & S. F. Eailroad. Sixty- 
seven miles away is Albuquerque, where 
we alight for a moment and greet another 
Connecticut man, Rev. Mr. Murphy, 
formerly of Granby and Essex, who is 
now^ pastor of a Congregational Church 
in Albuquerque. It seems remarkable, 
as it certainly is gratifying, to meet so 
many New England men at all import- 
ant w^estern localities ; and we notice, too, 
that they generally hold positions of trust 
and influence. Just west of the place last 
named the train halts at a large Indian vil- 
lage to enable us to observe the natives. 
They come flocking about the cars, nearly 
or quite a hundred of them, with pottery 
and turquoises to sell. They are nearly all 
squaws, old and young, wearing none too 
much clothing for tlie weather, or for de- 
cency's sake. One little girl, perhaps ten 
years old, attracted my attention by her dress, 
which was that of civilization and unlike 
the garb of her companions. I ventured to 



74 FROM NEW ENGLAND 

address her, and found that she spoke excel- 
lent English. She had been three years 
at school at Albuquerque, and had learned 
to read and write as well as speak English 
with wonderful accuracy. In response to 
questions she told me her age and name, 
something about her home and associates, 
and soon became the central object of inter- 
est in our crowd. When asked why she 
dressed like little girls of civilized people, 
she promptly replied that since she had been 
to school she had no wish to follow the cus- 
toms of her people in the matter of dress. 
It would have been a real pleasure if I 
could have made her a present of a suitable 
book, as she said she was fond of reading. 
But we had no other reading matter than 
the railroad time tables, so I was obliged to 
content myself with dropping a small coin 
into her hand, instead, for memory's sake. 
For nearly two hundred miles, or as far 
as Kincon, we follow the course of the Rio 
Grande. Trees of respectable dimensions 



TO TTJE PACT FTC. 75 

occasionally make their appearance, and 
some vegetation, in the way of stunted gras& 
and the mnskeet bean brush, makes it pos- 
sible for immense flocks of sheep to nibble a 
good living. We took supper at Deming, 
and next morning started on the thousand- 
mile ride across the desert which lies west 
of the New Mexico and Arizona line. 
Drifting sands, and baked clay bottoms, and 
rocks, and sterile formations generally, suc- 
ceed each other throughout the whole dis- 
tance, varied only by occasional forests of 
cactus in every conceivable form of nngain- 
liness, or growths of scrub cedar in spot& 
w^here a little humidity make this low form 
of vegetable life possible. 

There is very little worthy of note until 
long after we cross the Colorado River and 
get up into the vicinity of the San Bernar- 
dino Range of mountains. I should, how- 
ever, make an exception of the repeated and 
wonderful mirages seen at several points on 
the desert, and especially just east of Tuc- 



76 FROM NEW ENGLAND 

son. ^o descriptions that I now recall of 
these strange illusions have conveyed to my 
mind any proper conception of the reality 
as beheld at the south of us during the 
Tuesday of our memorable trip across the 
■sand plains of Central Arizona. At Benson 
Junction we passed the smelting works of 
the Tombstone Milling e^ Mining Com- 
pany, whose stock is so largely owned in 
Hartford and other parts of Connecticut. 
The mines are twenty-two miles south. I 
am informed tliat the company is just now 
suffering from a strike among the miners, 
all work being suspended until the differ- 
ences can be adjusted. The company pay 
three dollars per day ; the miners want four 
dollars. At Tucson we meet the worst look- 
ing Indians yet seen — the Yumas — a bad 
lot, ugly, treacherous, repulsive to the last 
degree. Neither the " braves " nor the 
squaws have drapery enough about them to 
render their presence tolerable in the vicinity 
of a railroad station. 



TO THE PACIFIC. ^J 

After running tli rough one straight stretch 
of sand, sixty miles, we bring up at a perfect 
oasis — Dos Pahnos — wliere are some elegant 
pahn trees, and a variety of vegetation whose 
existence is accounted for by tlie fact that 
the soil was brought on cars and dumped 
there, and that is it ke]^t irrigated from an 
artesian well close at hand. After leaving 
this breathing-spot we encounter but a few 
miles more of the desert, coming at AVhite- 
w^ater into the region of wild Howers, which 
delight and astonish us bv their beauty and 
variety. From this place, on to Los Ange- 
les, we iind a succession of fiow^ers in 
unnumbered millions, flowering cacti in all 
the shades of the rainbow, yucca blossoms 
in waxen clusters larger than the largest 
bunches of bananas, barley fields ready for 
the sickle, apricot orchards, orange groves 
yellow with fruit, acres upon acres of vine- 
yards, the beantiful blooming alfalfa in its 
bed of green, and all the myriad forms of 
vegetation w^hich is found only in this gar- 



78 FROM NEW ENGLAND 

den of the world. The contrast with the 
desolation of but an hour ago is so striking 
as to command the wonder and admiration 
of us all. 

At Colton, liftj-eight miles from Los 
A-ngeles, where the train made a halt, I was 
sur})rised to observe upon the platform of 
the station your Mr. B. A. Simmons, the 
wholesale grocer of State Street. He is in 
the West looking after business interests, 
especially in the State of Arizona. 

We reached Los Angeles at one o'clock 
this afternoon, and are housed at the Pico. 
A week is assigned for this beautiful region. 
Meanwhile the Yosemite parties will be 
made up, in which nearly every one of us 
expects to participate. Los Angeles has a 
population of over twenty thousand. Its 
main thoroughfares have an aspect of decided 
business activity. It is emphatically a city 
of groves and gardens. Fruits and flowers 
abound everywhere. There are large orch- 
ards and vineyards within the city limits, 



TO THE PACIFIC. 79 

and many private residences are embowered 
in flowers and surrounded by park-like 
grounds. I have, of course, not yet bad the 
opportunity for any very extended observa- 
tions, but enough is ah'eady apparent to 
indicate numerous and inviting attractions 
for those who, like me, have known of south- 
ern California only by the books. I expect 
to visit Pasadena to-morrow, and all tlie 
other delightful suburbs on succeeding days. 
Oranges are ripe ; if I can't get in a box of 
them for The Post's editorial table, I may 
be able to ship you a few of the blossoms. 
We'll see. 



30 FROM NEW ENGLAND 



VI. 

Delightful Days at Los Angeles — Some 
Surprises in the Valley — Sierra Madi^e Villa 
— The Groves and Vineyards — Great Cali- 
fornia Wineries — A Day at Santa Monica — 
The Climate. 

Los Angeles, Cal., May IStli. 
I have spent four delightful days in this 
"City of the Angels." The city itself is 
very like a hundred other cities, in its 
streets, and buildings, and people, and busi- 
ness, and whatever else is likely to meet 
the eye of a casual observer. It has more 
Chinese and fewer Irishmen among its com- 
mon people than has Hartford, for instance ; 
but in all its material aspects it is not so 
unlike the average IS^ew England city of its 
size as to create any marked impression on 



TO THE PACIFIC. gl 

the Xew England visitor who makes its 
acquaintance. It has picturesque hillsides 
on whicli nestle the cottages of the middle 
classes ; so has AVorcester, and so have 
scores of villas^es in our own State. Its 
broad avenues are bordered with the em- 
bowered palaces of wealth, with green 
lawns, and stately trees, and fountains, and 
singing birds ; so are your Washington 
Street and Farmington Avenue, and as well 
the aristocratic streets and avenues of every 
other Northern city. It is not Los Angeles 
proper that impresses the stranger with a 
single pleasurable emotion that he has not 
already felt, perhaps, a thousand times. 
And this will account for the disappoint- 
ment which manifested itself in the elonga- 
ted countenances and sarcastic remarks of 
many of the Eaymond Party the morning 
after the day of our arrival in the city. 
Some of them were actually sour. They 
thought they had seen it all, and w^ere now 
ready to move on to San Francisco ! Thurs- 



82 FROM NEW ENGLAND 

day's excursion in carriages dispelled the 
illusion, and taught ns that the glory of 
Los Angeles is its suburbs. Let me describe 
our ride to Pasadena, San Gabriel, Sunny 
Slope, and the Sierra Madre Villa, a circuit 
of thirty -fiv^e miles entirely within the \^al- 
ley. 

A right royal day it proved, in its favor- 
ing skies and the balminess of its atmosphere, 
but chiefly in the abundance of wonders 
which it brought to our amazed and now 
surfeited senses. The visual delights of 
landscape, and fruit, and flower, were a 
constant challenge to our highest admira- 
tion ; the perfume of roses and orange 
groves made the thin air deliciously intoxi- 
cating ; while the appeals to the palate 
w^hich came from the orange orchards, the 
vineyards and the wineries, were entirely 
beyond our poor powers of resistance. To 
all these unfamiliar luxuries and tempta- 
tions it must be confessed the majority of 
us became willing subjects. The valley, or 



TO THE PACIFIC. g3 

succession of valleys, through which our 
route lies, is upward of a hundred miles in 
length, with an average width of about fif- 
teen miles. It is watered by the Los An- 
geles Kiver, from which hundreds of irri- 
gating streams are diverted by means of 
canals, water-wheels, and hydraulic rams. 
For cultivation of the soil in all this part of 
the country the dependence upon artificial 
irrigation is absolute. Nothing is or can be 
produced without it. It is even more a 
feature here than fertilizing is in the East. 
This great valley, or such part of it as has 
been brought under cultivation, is covered 
with vineyards and orange orchards, with 
fields of barley, groves of lemon, fig, and 
English walnut trees. The roads are bor- 
dered with pepper trees, which at this sea- 
son present a beautiful appearance, fes- 
tooned as they are with their deep red 
clusters of ripening pepper berries. Palm and 
banana trees occasionally rear their grace- 
ful forms amid miles of cypress hedges, and 



84 FROM XEW ENGLAND 

the eucalyptus abounds everywhere, growing 
to great size and forming the chief depen- 
dence for lire wood. Groves of live-oak 
with its beautiful dark foliage fringe the 
streams and afford grateful shade upon the 
highways, the wild lands or occasional sand 
patches being carpeted with wild flowers in 
every conceivable hue, and in forms of won- 
derful beauty. The fig, the apricot, the 
peach, the Japanese plum, the olive, the 
pomegranate, and scores of other fruit-bear- 
ing trees with less familiar names, are all 
about us in fruit or bloom. Indeed, this 
drive of nearly forty miles affords a view 
of the fauna and flora of Southern Califor- 
nia as complete as it is entrancing and 
memorable. 

To me the chief objects of interest 
amid all this profusion are three, namely, 
the roses, the orange groves, and the vine- 
yards. Of the first I can give yon no ade- 
quate description. I have upon my table 
at this moment a bouquet of rose buds 



TO THE PACIFIC. 85 

wliich will average larger than a hen's eg:g. 
I don't know their names, fnrther than tliat 
half of them are my special delight, the 
moss rose. Others are white, salmon-colored, 
the deepest red,- and the loveliest blush. 
The rose trees attain great size and are 
most prolitic. Some of the creepers are 
trained to cover an entire arbor. I do not 
think the roses are as fragrant as many 
that we find East, but in magnitude of 
bloom they rival the peony at its best. I 
have seen several red roses that measure six 
inches across. I should be greatly delighted 
if a few of these Los Angeles roses could be 
ti*ansplanted and made to thrive on certain 
lawns which I could name on AA^inthrop 
Street and Sigourney Street in your City of 
Hartford. 

Xot everybody has seen an orange grove. 
But everybody has an idea, from description 
or otherwise, if he has not seen for himself, 
how an orange grove looks. I had an idea, 
but it was not the correct one. For instance. 



86 FROM NEW ENGLAND 

I never saw or heard it stated that oraiio;e 
groves are plowed, and liarrow^ed, and hoed, 
and kept as free from grass and weeds as a 
vegetable garden. Bnt such is the fact ; 
and when I saw my first " grove " standing 
on plowed ground, instead of on pasture 
land like the apple orchards of Kew Eng- 
land, I recorded the event as surprise num- 
ber one. Again, while standing amid a 
cluster of orange trees and observing the 
profusion of great golden globes pendant 
from the branches in very direction, I ven- 
tured a remark to the gardener : " We are 
just at the proper season for seeing the fruit 
at its best ? " " You may come again at 
Christmas, and it w^ill be as you see it now," 
he replied. Which is true, for tlie orange 
tree of Southern California is ever green 
and ever bearing. It buds and flowers and 
fruits continually, from January to Decem- 
ber. This was surprise number two. And 
while I am in the line of confession, it may 
as well be recorded here that my idea of a 



TO THE PACIFIC. 



87 



"grove" liad by early education beconie 
so contracted that snrjDrise number three 
awaited me when I rode straight through 
six miles of orange trees and learned that 
the plant extended miles on either hand. 
No name less dignified than "orange for- 
ests" will appropriately designate these 
great tracts of land devoted to orange cul- 
ture in the Los Angeles Yalley. The local- 
ity known as Pasadena is simply a, great 
collection of private residences whose own- 
ers are orange growers. Their houses are 
palaces, and their grounds are flower gar- 
dens, each in the midst of an orange grove. 
There may be, but there need not be, a more 
beautiful spot upon earth. On the north of 
the valley, fifteen miles from Los Angeles, 
at the foot of the Sierra Madre Kange of 
mountains, is the Sierra Madre Yilla, a 
charming hostelry in the midst of an orange 
and lemon orchard, with an immense lawn 
covered with roses and tastily trimmed 
cypresses. We dined at the viDa, and by 



gg FROM NEW ENGLAND 

courtesy of the proprietor went through 
the grounds and helped ourselves to fruits 
and flowers. The venerable doctor showed 
us every attention, making the brief visit 
exceedingly pleasant and profitable. 

And now the vineyards. Grape culture 
is doubtless the principal industry of this 
portion of the State. The aci-eage under 
cultivation far exceeds that of the orange. 
There are twelve million grape-vines in the 
San Gabriel and San Bernardino Valleys 
alone. We passed on the road one vineyard 
of fifteen hundred acres, and scores of 
smaller ones covering anywdiere from twenty 
acres up to many hundreds. "We made a 
brief visit to L. J. Rose's famous ranche 
and vineyards, and to his winery. He 
owns five thousand acres of land, nine 
hundred and sixty acres of which are set 
with grapes, and six hundred acres with 
orange trees. The annual product of this 
winery is four hundred and fifty thousand 
gallons of whines, and eighty -five thousand 



TO THE PACIFIC. 89 

gallons of grape brandy. Mr. Rose is 
owner of the famous trotting stallion " Snl- 
tair," which with several other noted horses 
were exhibited to us at the stables. 

Through favor of Hon. Mr. Marx of Tole- 
do, Ohio, a member of the party, your 
correspondent and the Messrs. Whidden of 
Boston were entertained at the great win- 
ery of Messrs. Kohler & Frohling, which is 
located near this city. This is not only the 
pioneer, but the most extensive wine house 
in the country. Its vineyards are here and 
in Sonoma, its warehouses in Xew York and 
San Francisco. Four thousand tons of 
grapes are crushed here annually, the pro- 
duct being seven hundred thousand gallons 
of wine, and thirty thousand gallons of 
brandy. This house has a national reputa- 
tion for the excellence and purity of its 
wines, which are put upon the market in bulk, 
the casks being made upon the premises. 
We had the satisfaction of witnessing tlie 
various processes employed in wine making, 
and of testing the quality of the Angelica, 



90 FROM NEW ENGLAND 

Muscatel, Port, and other brands produced 
here. 

Friday was occupied by a few of us In a 
trip to Santa Monica, the alleged " Long 
Branch of the Pacific Coast." The Pacific 
Ocean is there — nothing more, if we except 
the lone fisherman who patiently, but un- 
successfully, waited for a bite during the 
four mortal hours that we tarried upon the 
sands. There are a thousand places on 
the Atlantic Coast between Portland and 
Charleston, either of which is more attrac- 
tive as a seaside resort than Santa Monica. 
The place, however, affords a good sea- 
breeze, has a narrow beach with safe surf bath- 
ing, a bluff sixty or seventy feet high, and 
a little village a few rods back. It is the 
terminus of the Los Angeles & Indepen- 
dence Railroad, fifteen miles from the city. 
The ride to and from Santa Monica is very 
pleasant, the road passing through a highly 
cultivated section, as, indeed, may be said 
of the route by which every suburb of this 
objective point is reached. 



TO THE PACIFIC. 91 

In company with two other gentlemen I 
visited Washington Garden, a large park 
and orange grove in the western part of the 
city, Saturday. There is a pavilion and 
refreshment hall, with other facilities for 
enjoyment. Twenty-five cents gives the 
" freedom of the garden," which means to 
appropriate all the flowers and oranges one 
can eat or carry away in his pockets. I find 
that practice has raised my itiside capacity 
to about ten, and that with overcoat and 
duster at hand I have pockets for about two 
dozen of the robust sizes. My room at the 
Pico Hotel has about a peck of orange 
blossoms, bestow^ed in various convenient 
places, w^hich I have brought as trophies 
from one or another of the groves and gar- 
dens where this " freedom " has been ex- 
tended. It is an uncommonly sweet room 
for a hotel — much sweeter then wdien first 
assigned to me. 

After an experience of four days in Los 
Angeles I feel like confessing to considerable 
disappointment in regard to the climate. It 



92 FROM yEW ENGLAND 

has been represented as phenomenally salu- 
brious and healthful. I have seen it stated 
repeatedly that the purity and dryness of its 
atmosphere are unequaled " elsewhere on the 
globe," and tliat it is particularly adapted as 
a residence for persons with weak lungs or 
of consumptive tendencies. I do not think 
that the facts warrant such statements. 
Each day has thus far been sunny, bnt there 
is a chill in the atmosphere, particularly in 
the early morning, wliich is very trying even 
to those whose lungs are not weak. Those 
of our party who have allowed their windows 
to remain open througli the night, have 
almost without exception taken cold. I do 
not think the climate here is at all compara- 
ble with that of many places in Colorado. 
Sixty miles east, at Riverside, is a better 
place for invalids, because it is protected 
from the harsh ocean breezes and has a 
much more equable temperature. Los An- 
geles has obtained a good start, but Pomona 
and Riverside will give it a hard pull in the 
struggle for population and business. 



TO THE PACIFIC. 9g 

They treat dead editors here with great 
respect. Thomas J. Cavstile, late associate 
editor of the Los Angeles Times was buried 
this afternoon with very imposing ceremo- 
nies — bands of music, military, Knights 
Templar and Masonic organizations partici- 
pating. Three thousand people were pres- 
ent. It was a great demonstration, and I 
have no doubt that among the deepest 
mourners of the editor dead was many a 
man who had " stopped his paper " on 
account of some fancied grievance from the 
editor living. Of the three daily papers 
published in this city, not one issues a Mon- 
day edition. They say the printers will not 
work Sunday I 

Fifteen of our party started yesterday for 
the Yosemite ; about as many more will go 
to-morrow, and another installment on Tues- 
day. The itinerary names Wednesday as 
the day of departure for those who go direct 
to San Francisco. That means your corre- 
spondent, among others. 



94 FROM NEW ENGLAND 



Yll. 

Tehachapi Pass and the Sierra Kevadas 

— Little Peculiarities of Los Angeles — Fare- 
well Trips among the Orange Groves — The 
Mojave Desert — Crossing the Backbone — Ap- 
proaching San Francisco. 

San Francisco, Cal., May 23cl. 
We were a full week at Los Angeles ; long 
enough to become familiar with everything 
except the wretched idiom of its Mexicans 
and " greasers," and the insoluble intricacies 
of Los Angeles veracity. I have known 
some accomplished prevaricators in the land 
of steady habits, but none whose exploits 
deserve record in the distinguished category 
where the inhabitants of this city appear. 
Falsehood floats serenely in the atmosphere 
of the real estate offices, impedes your pro- 



TO THE PACIFIC. 95 

gress in shopping tours among the mer- 
chants, and drops in chunks from the bland 
countenance of the heathen Chinee as he 
returns five of your twelve pieces from the 
laundry and swears " him alle here." We 
left at half past seven oclock a. m., although 
the time-table had it quarter past twelve, 
and our native porter insisted that the train 
would depart at high noon. Divers of our 
party have been apprehensive of possible 
infection during the protracted period of our 
sojourn in the city. As you will observe, 
however, by this paragraph, no indication of 
taint has yet made it appearance among us. 
Despite the little impediment above al- 
luded to in the w^ay of our highest enjoyment 
of local society, I think it may be said truth- 
fully (not according to the Los Angeles 
standard) that the week has been pleasantly 
and profitably spent. I have in a previous 
letter given you some account of visits to 
several suburbs of the city. These visita- 
tions were continued, including pretty much 



96 FROM NEW ENGLAND 

every locality of interest within a radius of 
a dozen miles. Throngli the continued and 
abiding courtesy of my friend Whidden of 
Boston, I was entertained during one event- 
ful day at the magnificent villa and orange 
ranch of Mr. James Ford, ten years ago a 
resident of the old Bay State, and a personal 
friend of your Boston correspondent, Hon. 
B. P. Shillaber, from whom Mr. Whidden 
carried letters of introduction. Mr. Ford's 
place lies under the shadow of the Sierra 
Madre Range. His ranch contains fifty 
acres under cultivation, being principally 
orange grove and vineyard. The approach 
to his charming residence is through a pri- 
vate avenue bordered with orange trees, in 
full fruit, more than half a mile in length 
and leading in a straight line from tlie high- 
way to the plaza upon which the cottage 
stands. We were received with royal hospi- 
tality by the proprietor and the ladies of 
the family, who in many graceful ways 
facilitated our participation in the weafth 



TO THE PACIFIC. 97 

of fruits and flowers by wliicli they are 
surrounded. I do not need to say that 
the occasion was one of great and lasting 
interest. 

My farewell suburban ride and walk, still 
in the company of the friend above men- 
tioned, was to the largest orange orchard in 
the world, a short distance west of Los 
Angeles. It is owned by a Mr. Wolfskill, 
who puts upon the market this season 
twenty-five thousand boxes of oranges and 
five thousand boxes of lemons. It is an 
immense afi'air. The grounds are patrolled 
by an Englishman with half a dozen dogs, 
whose business it is to intercept intruders. 
Although our party were provided with a 
permit from headquarters, this officious 
English dignitary, with an obtuseness of 
intellect which has characterized his ances- 
try since the days of George III., was in- 
clined to dispute our progress. We finally 
succeeded in convincing him that we were 
not tramps, or thieves, or escaped convicts, 



9g FROM NEW ENGLAND 

and passed on unsliot by him or '' uncliawed " 
by his dogs. Mr. Wolfskill has a great 
bonanza in his orange orchard. He gets 
three dollars a box for the fruit. 

I had a very pleasant interview Tuesday 
evening with Mr. F. O, Mosebach, formerly 
of Hartford, wlio is a practicing attorney in 
this city, and who also has the general agency 
here for the Hartford Fire Insurance Com- 
pany. Mr. Mosebach was for several years 
in the investment department of the ^Etna 
Life at the home office. He came here from 
Hartford somewhat less than two years ago. 
His professional business here is quite lai'ge, 
and he is the owner of a ranch of one hun- 
dred and sixty acres, about forty miles north 
of the city. He is an accomplished gen- 
tleman, and it is a pleasure to record his 
prosperity. 

Our final departure for San Francisco was 
delayed eighteen hours by a railroad disaster 
near Deming, which prevented the Pacific 
express from getting through until the morn- 



TO THE PACIFIC. . 99 

ing of the twenty-second. Tlie nnpleasaut- 
Dess of this delay was fully compensated, 
however, by the daylight trip which it 
secured for us over the Tehachapi Summit 
and through the pass of the same name 
amid the Sierra Kevada Mountains — a part 
of the route invariably passed over in the 
night time when trains run by schedule 
either way. The distance from Los Angeles 
to San Francisco is precisely four hundred 
and eighty-two miles. Thirty-six miles 
from the first-named city, at an altitude of 
about one thousand five hundred feet, the 
famous San Fernando Tunnel, more than a 
mile and a quarter in length, passes through 
the mountain of the same name. Then we 
enter the Mojave Desert, and travel a full 
hundred miles through a scene of wilderness 
and desolation, save only for the abundant 
wdld flowers which spring everywhere from 
the un watered sand. Forests of cactus of 
course abound in all their ugliness, and sage 
brush occasionally relieves the bareness of 



100 FROM NEW ENGLAND 

the surface. But for hours this monotony 
of desert scenery is unbroken by any evi- 
dence of civilization, while the lizard and 
ground-squirrel appear to be the sole repre- 
sentatives of animal life in all the dreary 
waste. By gradual ascent, however, the 
summit before alluded to is reached, and 
then we begin the wonderful and seemingly 
perilous ride down the northern slope. For 
twenty-four miles we descend over an aver- 
age grade of one hundred and sixty feet to 
the mile, through seventeen successive tun- 
nels, each from three hundred to a thousand 
feet in leno^th, windino- amono; the mountain 
tops and over yawning chasms upon frail 
trestle-work, the railway once actually cross- 
ing its own path where a drop of a hundred 
feet could be accomplished in no other way. 
From some of these altitudes the scenery 
is surpassingly beautiful. We look down 
upon a thousand lower heights, as one looks 
from the top of Mount Washington upon 
the summits which lie below it ; w^hile in a 



TO THE PACIFIC. \()\ 

liniidred distant vallevs, and npon the slopes 
of as many hillsides, the dark and dense 
foliage of clustering live-oaks appears in 
charming relief against the lighter green 
and brighter colors of alfalfa and wild flow- 
ers and barley fields which carpet the earth 
as far as the eye can see in the direction of 
the broad valleys of the San Joaquin and 
the Sacramento. The transition from desert 
on the south to almost tropical verdure on 
the north of this " backbone of the conti- 
nent " is exceedingly impressive, accom- 
plished as it is within a few moments of 
time, or simply by traversing the less than 
half a mile of level ridge which constitutes 
the "Divide." It is said, and doubtless 
truh^, that this twenty-four miles of way up 
and down and among the Sierra Xevadas is 
the most remarkable triumph of railroad 
engineering skill ever achieved in any part 
of the world. An employe on the train in- 
formed me that three civil engineers of great 
repute first undertook to survey a passage 



102 FROM NEW ENGLAND 

tlirongli these peaks and crags, and after 
repeated attempts declared a ronte impossi- 
ble of location. A boy of twenty took up 
the job where his elders had forsaken it, and 
this miraculous Pass is the result. It must 
have cost a vast deal of money as well as of 
brains, and it is doubtful if the undertaking 
ever could have become a success except 
with the aid of government appropriations 
and the cheap labor of the Chinese. I re- 
member with grand satisfaction my experi- 
ences at Marshall and Yeta Passes, at Clear 
Creek Canon and the Koyal Gorge, and 
amons the other wonders of the Colorado 
Rockies; but I think the impressions received 
in the descent from Tehachapi Summit will 
be quite as lasting, and infinitely more of a 
"joy forever" than either of the wonder- 
ful works of nature or art which has taken 
precedence with me in the order of its 
beholding. 

Night overtook us soon after leaving 
Sumner Station, — a locality which will be 



TO THE PACIFIC. 103 

remembered chiefly by reason of the luxuri- 
ous supper \yhich was proyided there for our 
delectation. Tipton and Toulare \yere suc- 
cessively reached in good order, though it 
must be confessed that neither receiyed from 
myself or my friend Whidden the attention 
which may have been their due. This pos- 
sible dereliction in duty on the part of your 
correspondent, should you think best to re- 
quire an explanation, is accounted for by 
the demands which Talbot and Knowlton 
were at that time making upon us in an un- 
decided game at whist. The fertile valley 
of the San Joaquin, with its one hundred 
and fifty miles of continuous wheat fields, 
would have been at least worth looking at, 
but there was no moon and the occupants 
of the train were honestly attempting to 
get asleep, after being roused at Madera 
by the misguided portion of our party who 
insisted on being let off there to make a 
midnight start for the Yosemite. At half- 
past four in the morning the irrepressible 



104 FROM NEW ENGLAND 

porter announced that we were approaching 
Oakland, and must dress immediately in 
order to catcli the ferryboat for San Fran- 
cisco. Everybody obeyed promptly. The 
train passing a station abont ten minutes 
later, time tables were consulted and Oak- 
land found to be more than forty miles away. 
I sat down in an easy corner and tried to 
woo sleep. The sun was just showing itself 
in the east. A voluble gentleman came in 
from a rear Pullman and sat down beside 
me. He had been in San Francisco once 
before, and of course knew every object 
about us at a glance. He called the names 
and pointed out the localities of all the vil- 
lages through or in sight of which we passed, 
and voiced the remarkable pronunciations 
with w^onderful facility. This was "San 
Hosay," and that was " Mairsade," and the 
other was "Yelayo," and so on, far and 
near. He filled me up with statistics, and 
explained the reason why " we " raised 
'' only " two hundred and thirty thousand 



TO THE PACIFIC. 105 

tons of wheat in the " San Wankin " valley 
last- year. In process of thne we reached 
Oakland, and the train halted at the npper 
station ; bnt the gentleman talked on, and 
called my attention to the Golden Gate, and 
was still on the qui vive for something new 
to do or say for my delectation, nor gave 
himself a thought, until as the train was 
moving on the conductor passed us and 
dropped to the loquacious stranger a re- 
mark : ^' I thought you wanted to get otF 
at Sixteenth street." This was Sixteenth 
street. The man got off at Sixteenth street, 
but in a demoralized condition owing to the 
headway of tlie train. If I had not become 
very tired of his well-intended attention, too 
tired to exert myself, I should have made 
an effort to repress the smile which stole 
over me as he gathered himself and beat the 
soil from his pants and settled liis liat firmly 
in place. It was rude for me to smile, but I 
know my rudeness was not observed by him. 
AVe reached San Francisco at seven o'clock 



106 FROM NEW ENGLAND 

this morning, and proceeded at once to the 
Palace Hotel, from which I now write. 
Half the time allotted for the entire trip has 
now been consumed, thongli we have but 
just reached the extreme western terminus. 
We shall remain in this citv two full weeks, 
spend four days in Monterey, leaving for the 
East on the eleventh of June. I will reserve 
for another letter whatever is to be said of 
San Francisco and its surroundings, wdiich 
we shall have ample time and opportunity 
to observe. Up to the present time our 
party have been wonderfully favored with 
good weather, good health, and freedom from 
delays and other vexations of travel. I 
think the management of Mr. Raymond and 
his successor, Mr. Harding, has been wise 
and eminently satisfactory. So far as has 
been possible, all our wants have been 
promptly provided for, and our highest com- 
fort promoted. I am reminded to say this 
now, because of the very different experi- 
ences of other parties with whom I happen 



TO THE PACIFIC. IO7 

to have come in contact en route, and not 
with a desire to pat anybody's back. 

P. S. — I quite unexpectedly met our 
mutual friend M. Bennett, Jr., in the dining 
hall at the Palace an hour ago. It was a 
most agreeable surprise. 



108 FROM NEW ENGLAND 



TIIL 

The California of '49 i 
2^ography of San Francisco — Cahle Cars — 
The Palace Hotel — A Drive Among the 

Suburbs — Sunday — The Chinese Quarter — 
An Opium Den — Disgusting Situations. 

San Francisco, Cal., May 28tli. 
I find it difficult to realize that this great, 
bustling city is the California of '49. We 
old fellows who were boys when the gold 
fever broke out, who still remember how 
our older acquaintances of that remote 
period embarked on the seven-months' trip 
^' 'round the Horn," in search of the far- 
off land of gold, have always been in the 
habit of thinking of California as a great 
mining camp, where the chief industry 
is, and ought to be, digging for gold. And 



TO THE PACIFIC. 109 

SO, when I come to San Francisco and find 
it a commercial city like Boston, and hear 
people say that all there is of interest to 
tourists in California is to be found right 
here, ignoring the old memories, and the 
old experiences, and all that, it seems to me 
as if there must be something wrong some- 
where. I want to get back into the gulches 
and among the foot hills, and dig a little 
myself. It seems as if there should be 
a good many nuggets in California yet, for 
they don't pretend to claim that the State 
has been more than half dug over by squat- 
ters and prospectors. Whatever the pres- 
ent situation, as regards the importance of 
mining interests in this State, it is certain 
that San Francisco was born of the gold ex- 
citement of 1848 and 1849. First a place of 
rendezvous for fortune seekers, it became 
successively a depot of supplies, a wide- 
awake and populous town, and on through 
advancing stages until, as before stated, its 
inhabitants now affirm that it embodies all 



110 FROM NEW ENGLAND 

there is of consequence in tlie whole state. 
But let me start again and tell you some- 
thing of the city as I have observed it. 

The topography of San Francisco will be 
well represented in miniature, if you place 
two soup tureens and five bowls bottom up 
on your dining table, and throw a table 
cloth loosely over the whole. If your table 
be oblong, let it stand lengthwise east and 
west, and let the tureens be placed side 
by side, each pointing across it ; the bowls 
may flank the other dishes at their outsides. 
These seven elevations and the surrounding- 
surface will very well represent the seven 
hills and surrounding plain on which the 
city is situated. If you add a particularly 
deep bowl near the northeast edge, to rep- 
resent Telegraph Hill, the topographic illu- 
sion will be complete. Some of the longest 
and most important streets, like California 
and Geary Streets, run in a straight line 
from the east edge of the table, outside 
which is the bay of San Francisco, over the 



TO THE PACIFIC. HI 

soup tureens and bowls to the western edge, 
which is the Pacific Ocean. Many of these 
hills are so steep that no vehicle, except the 
cable cars, can go up or down them, and the 
grass, therefore, literally grows in the 
streets. And, by the way, these cable cars 
are the very perfection of street railway 
service. Each car is one half open and the 
other half closed. ^N'o matter how heavy 
the load, they go right up and down the 
steep hills and across the plains at a uniform 
rate of speed, always under the instant con- 
trol of the " driver." Is"o baulky horses, no 
carrying the passenger half a dozen blocks 
out of his way because the car cannot be 
stopped on an up grade, none of the whip- 
ping and swearing and confusion which 
signalize the transit up your Asylum Hill, 
but the simple shifting of a lever and ofi' 
she scoots over tureens and bowls two 
hundred feet high, witliout the slightest 
apparent effort. From the Palace Hotel 
these cable cars run momently to every part 



112 ■ FROM NEW ENGLAND 

of the city, and connect witli steam cars 
and steam ferries to all the important 
suburbs. The route through California 
Street passes over the summit of Knob Hill, 
where are located the elegant residences of 
ex-Governor Stanford, General Colton, Hon. 
Charles Crocker, Mrs. Mark Hopkins, Flood, 
O'Brien, and the other millionaires whose 
names are familar in political and commer- 
cial circles. Their grounds are charmingly 
laid out and cultivated with exquisite taste. 
The residences of all classes throughout the 
city are almost uniformly of wood, with a 
tendency to jig-saw ornamentation which is 
so universal as to excite imfavorable criticism. 
Stone and iron, and brick faced with mastic, 
are used with good effect in the construction 
of the most imposing edifices in the busi- 
ness part of the city. I suppose that this 
Palace Hotel, at which the Raymond Party 
are quartered, is one of the chief wonders 
of San Francisco. It is the largest hotel in 
the world, as well as the richest and most 



TO THE PACIFIC. W^ 

elegant. It covers an area of ninety-six 
thousand two hundred and fifty square feet, 
and the distance around it is exactly one- 
quarter of a mile. There is a promenade 
on the roof of one-third of a mile. The 
grand central court, into which the visitor 
in his carriage is first ushered, is about one 
hundred by one hundred and fifty feet, 
seven stories high and roofed with glass. 
Ornamental balconies run around its four 
sides, at each floor, on whicli are growing 
tropical plants and flowering shrubs, mak- 
ing the place one of rare beauty and attrac- 
tiveness. Around the ground promenade 
are grouped the ofiice, reception parlors, 
reading-rooms, breakfast and dining-rooms, 
etc., with spacious communicating hallways. 
The rooms are mostly en suite, very large, 
and handsomely furnished at a cost of more 
than half a million. The structure itself 
cost six millions. Its exterior is also very 
elegant, every window being a bay window 
on both the Market and Montgomery Street 

8 



114 FROM NEW ENGLAND 

fronts. Ex-Senator Sharon is the owner of 
the property, and it is under the manage- 
ment of his nephew, Alexander D. Sharon. 
There is a great number of very fine stores 
on Market Street and its tributary thorough- 
fares, representing as wide a range of trade 
as can be found in Eastern cities. Andrew's 
diamond palace on Montgomery Street, and 
some others that I have noticed, may be 
classed with the most pretentious of their 
kind in I^ew York or Boston. 

A carriage drive through Golden Gate 
Park, past the cemeteries, and on toward 
Point Lobos and its famous Seal Pocks, has 
familiarized me with about all there is be- 
tween the bay and the ocean worth men- 
tioning. Nobody who comes to San Fran- 
cisco fails of visiting the Seal Pocks, or rather 
the beach and Cliff House, close by which 
the rocks are seen. This point on the 
Pacific Coast may be called the Coney 
Island of California — that is, if we grant to 
Santa Monica the other title, which she has 



TO THE PACIFIC. \\^ 

appropriated, of tlie "Lon<2^ Branch of the 
Pacific." At the northern terminus of a 
long sandy beach rises a rocky bluff; and 
where the rock rises highest and almost 
overhangs the ocean, at an altitude of a 
hundred feet or more above it, i\\Qy have 
built a handsome hotel which is called the 
Cliff House. From its broad and sheltered 
verandas there is an unobstructed view of 
the coast for a great distance, while on the 
west the blue expanse of the Pacific extends 
away to the horizon. From three hundred 
to five hundred feet seaward of this CHfi* 
House, and washed continually by the 
surging waves which break under its very 
foundations, are two groups of rocks, which 
have given the place its celebrity. These 
rocks are five in number ; the hio*hest and 
largest reaches an elevation of perhaps 
eighty feet at low tide; the smallest is 
barely seen above the surface at high water. 
The largest displaces a circular area of 
water perhaps one hundred and twenty feet 



IIQ FROM NEW ENGLAND 

in diameter ; the smallest is about as large 
as an old -fashioned country school-house. 
These rocks are the resort of hundreds of 
seals, which swarm and wriggle and 
squirm over them continually. The first 
sight of them at a little distance was most 
disgusting, each individual rock strongly 
reminding one of an immense fragment of 
cheese filled with squirming black maggots. 
The water seemed to be alive with these 
seals. They are most expert swimmers, and 
are constantly climbing out of the water 
ujDon the rocks, or tumbling ofi" from the 
rocks into the sea. It is very amusing to 
watch them, bufi'etted by the waves, in their 
patient efforts to get a foothold on the slip- 
pery rocks, and then in their awkward 
climbings upward and over the ledges. By 
the aid of a glass I could observe them quite 
critically. They grow to great size, and 
the largest appeared fairly gray with age. 
I understand they attain a weight of a 
thousand pounds, though none of those I 



TO THE PACIFIC. \YJ 

saw upon the rocks looked as if tliey 
weighed much more than half that, and the 
average seemed to be perhaps one or two 
hundred. The small ones were playful, 
and kept up an incessant barking ; but the 
old fellows evidently preferred to lie quietly 
in the sunshine, for they would occasionally 
make things very unpleasant in their neigh-, 
borhood when disturbed or approached by 
others more actively inclined. I sat on the 
veranda of the Cliff House for a couple of 
hours in the interested observance of this 
strange and constantly changing picture. 
There is an unaccountable fascination about 
it, as I understand, for everybody who 
comes here. This beach, and the three or 
four hotels thereon, with the Seal Rocks, 
constitute a sutRcient attraction to draw 
about two hundred thousand visitors liither 
every year. 

Sunday morning I attended service at the 
Howard Presbyterian Church on Mission 
Street, of which Dr. McKenzie is pastor. 



][lg FROM NEW ENGLAND 

Being now absent on his vacation, his pul- 
pit is supplied by Dr. Stratton, President 
of the University of tlie Pacific, a Methodist 
Theological Institution. He ranks among 
the most eloquent pulpit orators of the 
State. In the afternoon I accidentally heard 
part of a harangue from the female exhorter 
of a salvation army which paraded the streets 
with drums and banners. Still later in the 
afternoon, strolling in the vicinity of the 
City Hall, I was attracted by the brogue of 
an Irishman who was talking to an audience 
of a hundred or two men and boys. Seek- 
ing information of the orator from a passing 
policeman, I found that it was Dennis Kear- 
ney, he of the " sand lots." Of course his 
theme was politics. I have been surprised to 
find so much regard paid to the proprieties 
of the Sabbath here. There certainly is less 
profanation of holy time in San Francisco 
than in Chicago ; a more general suspension 
of business, and a more decorous manner of 
action and speech from those who walk the 



TO THE PACIFIC. ^^g 

pavement or lounge at places of common 
resort. I should feel some surprise, too, in 
seeing the women on the streets daily in seal- 
skin dolmans and fur-lined cloaks, and the 
men in heavy overcoats, so near the first of 
June, if the chilly trade-winds didn't cause 
me to forget the proximity of the summer 
solstice in my longings for the substantial 
winter wraps which I left in Hartford. I 
do not like the climate of San Francisco, or 
its winds. 

And there is one other feature which I 
must not om.it — the Chinese. I made the 
tour of Chinatown last evening, in company 
with five other gentlemen and under the 
protection of a well-known guide. Let me 
give you the names of these gentlemen, for 
whatever of ignominy or renown attaches to 
the tour, I feel that it should be shared by 
us individually. There was Mr. Almy for 
the heavy weight, Mr. Merriam as legal 
adviser, Mr. Craven and Mr. Bull, wdio were 
selected on account of their good looks, 



J20 FROM NEW ENGLAND 

while Mr. Richards and myself were there 
to uphold the dignity of the occasion. 
Detective Jackson intended a compliment 
when he remarked at the ontset that there 
was no probability of onr becoming any 
worse for what lie was abont to show us ! 
I think we saw something of every phase 
of Chinese life. The Chinese Quarter is 
included within eight blocks — four in length 
by two wide. It is in the heart of the city. 
Forty thousand Chinamen and women oc- 
cupy these eight blocks. Of course they are 
packed like sardines. We visited their 
money and stock exchange, their provisioii 
markets, drug stores, shops, and warehouses. 
AVe watched their native barber as he 
scraped the unlathered face of his customer, 
sitting bolt upright on a stool. With a 
long, narrow, flexible blade, the artist mowed 
over every square inch of surface from his 
breast-bone to the back of his head, digging 
out his ears and nostrils, scraping with equal 
care the bridge of his nose, his forehead, and 



TO THE PACIFIC. 121 

every otlier spot, whether encumbered witli 
beard or not. We drank tea and ate native 
refreshments at Chin Lang Pin's high-toned 
restam*ant, saw all the nonsense of the Joss 
House, and brought away therefrom sundry 
souvenirs in the shape of ready-made pray- 
ers, joss sticks, and other tomfoolery. Every 
worshipper at this institution is obliged to 
pay something, and this is the novel method 
of assessment : The boss of the place has a 
number of smooth sticks about a foot long, 
on one end of each of which is a character 
representing a sum of money. He places 
these sticks in a large wooden spoon-holder, 
lettered end inside, gives the spoon-holder a 
shake and passes it around. Each worship- 
per picks out his little stick and pays the 
sum indicated on it. The plan seems to 
afford complete satisfaction, each Pigtail 
giving a grunt and smiling a smile which 
appears to indicate that he thinks he has 
got off a little easier than his neighbor. It 
cost our crowd four bits to get away with 



122 FROM NEW ENGLAND 

this part of the entertainment. We went 
throngli the places where these people live. 
The houses are not high, none over three 
stories above ground, but they go down 
indefinitely into the bowels of the earth, and 
the deeper and darker and more contracted 
and airless the place, the better the occu- 
pants seem to be pleased. The rooms aver- 
age about six feet square ; the largest are 
perhaps eight by ten feet, and there are 
many below the average. The rooms have 
almost no furniture. A house wull contain, 
between its lowest sub-cellar and roof, from 
one hundred to five hundred of these rooms, 
and it is a pretty lonesome room that has 
not five or six Chinamen in it when they are 
all at home. Thus you see it is not very 
difficult to account for the five thousand 
people who occupy each of the eight blocks 
of the Chinese Quarter. 

But it is in the opium dens that they 
pack them away thickest. These run two 
and three stories underground, and seem to 



TO THE PACIFIC. 12B 

extend pretty much tliroiigli the entire 
colony. An opium den contains perhaps 
thirty rooms or cells ranged around a long and 
narrow court. Each cell has tiers of bunks- 
just wide, long, and high enough to accommo- 
date the prostrate form of a man. Each i& 
furnished with a piece of matting, a filthy 
pillow abont ten inches square, a small 
lamp, and an opium pipe which looks like 
a flute without any keys and with a porce- 
lain door-knob attached near one end. The 
door-knob part contains the opium, which 
the smoker melts and manipulates until it 
reaches the proper condition, when he sticks 
the small end of the flute into his mouth, 
ignites the drug, sucks and swallows and 
gasps alternately, until he finally passes off 
into a state of apparent stupefaction, and 
the attendant comes and remoyes the pipe 
and lamp. The bunks, with pipes and 
other paraphernalia, are rented by the pro- 
prietor of the place, and there appears to be 
no lack of patrons. We explored but one 



124 FROM NEW ENGLAND 

of these dens, and that was quite fulh 
The cells and alleys were like dungeons, 
dark, filthy, thick with opium smoke, and 
absolutely unventilated. I do not under- 
stand liow the inmates manage to sustain 
life there. I was well nigh suffocated 
simply in transit. 

I don't know whether the Chinese, as a 
class, in this city are more vicious than 
other nationalities. We saw a great many 
tableaux vivant representing every conceiv- 
able variety of evil; but then, our guide 
was instructed to show us Chinatown, and 
he obeyed orders without restrictions. I 
suppose tliat an exploration in other quar- 
ters, among French, Spanish, Mexican, or 
even American people, might reveal equally 
shocking and disgusting situations. For 
some reason there seems to be a cordial dis- 
like of the Chinese by all other nationalities 
here, yet I do not see how San Francisco 
could get along without them. They do 
all the menial work, the drudgery of domes- 



TO THE PACIFIC. ]^25 

tic and business life, and thej do it well 
and cheajDly. They are industrious, orderly, 
mind their own business, and are honest as 
honesty goes among the masses. I could 
name a race of jDeople among us for whom, 
in my opinion, it will be less tolerable in 
the day of judgment than for the heathen 
Chinee. 



126 FROM NEW ENGLAND 



IX. 

The Sundries of San Francisco — Memorial 
Day — The Cemeteries — Some Noted Mauso- 
leums — Floral Wonders — California Jour- 
nalism — The Sharon Racket — A Chinese 
Funeral — Sunday Evening on the Street. 

San Francisco, Cal., June 1st. 
Memorial Day, recurring during my stay 
in this city, has afforded an unanticipated 
opportunity of witnessing several quite ad- 
mirable displays. First, of the people in 
holiday attire, pouring out to observe or 
participate in the ceremonies of honoring 
the patriotic dead ; next, the military dis- 
play, including a parade of several regiments 
of the volunteer militia, detachments of the 
Grand Army, veterans of the last war, and 
" Sons of Veterans " of the war of the 



TO THE PACIFIC. 127 

Kevolution, the war of 1812, and the Mex- 
ican war; and last, though chief in attrac- 
tiveness to me, the great wealth of flowers 
contributed for the service, such as probably 
no other city in the country could produce. 
The military pageant was easily witnessed 
from the Market Street balconies of the 
Palace Hotel, headquarters of the com- 
manders having been established here, and 
the line forming on the streets centering at 
this point. The immense court of the hotel 
was filled with distinguished visitors, and 
the seven tiers of balconies above with 
ladies and gentlemen, while the military 
band in the courtyard rehearsed dirges and 
marches until ten o'clock, when the great 
procession moved. The line of march was 
not long, and when Yan Xess Avenue was 
reached the military were disbanded, the 
Grand Army boys proceeding directly to 
the cemeteries by the cable cars on Gearv, 
Haight, and California Streets, followed by 
wagon-loads of flowers in various designs, 



128 FROM NEW ENGLAND 

as well as loose. Among the designs I 
noticed an immense mounted cannon com- 
posed entirely of great white calla lilies ; a 
square shaft ten feet high and of propor- 
tionate size, made up of monster white car- 
nations, with a wreath of pansies inlaid 
upon each of the four sides, and a cluster 
of golden buds, which I did not recognize, 
at the apex; a brace of cavalry swords 
crossed, made of solid lilies of the valley, 
with their o^olden handles and guards 
formed of velvety dwarf marigolds, the 
whole resting on a bank of royal purple 
j^ansies, studded with little stars of orange 
blossoms, which were charmingly shaded 
down to the purple by a peculiar arrange- 
ment of mignonette. Some of the heavy 
designs, like shields and anchors, were made 
up of solid rose-buds in grades of size and 
shade which would be altogether impossible 
except in a region of roses like this. There 
were cut flowers in bouquet and loose, 
which I cannot name, and in profusion 



TO TEE PACIFIC. 129 

which required altogether several large 
teams to move them to the cemeteries. 

About three miles from this hotel, near 
the western limit of the city, stands " Lone 
Mountain,"- a bold, bare eminence per- 
haps six hundred feet above the surround- 
ing level. Upon its summit, which can be 
seen from all directions for many miles, has 
been erected an immense cross, which has 
no significance except to indicate that the 
ownership vests in the holy Catholic Church. 
The burial grounds of the city cluster 
about this mountain. They are five in 
number, and all quite large. As I have 
perhaps made sufficient allusion to these in 
a previous letter, I will only say here that 
the various grounds had, during the pre- 
ceding two or tliree days, been trimmed up 
and otherwise placed in a state of preparation 
for these services, and that they presented a 
more attractive appearance than when I saw 
them the preceding Sunday. The Catholic 
Cemetery contains the best as well as the 



130 FROM NEW ENGLAND 

poorest monuments. In it is the magnifi- 
cent mausoleum of the millionaire O'Brien, 
costing over one hundred and fifty thousand 
dollars ; also the Sharon monument and 
enclosure, together with a score or more of 
chapels, monuments, and shrines, which are 
very beautiful and very costly. Amid all 
and everywhere are the always abounding 
and ever blooming floral wonders which 
make beautiful alike the poorest sepulchres 
of the common herd and the silent palaces 
of the princely dead. I see by the papers 
that over three thousand bouquets and floral 
designs were contributed and placed upon 
soldiers' graves in the various cemeteries 
during the impressive ceremonies of Friday. 
It was such an offering as could be made by 
no other city in the land. 

We have now been in San Francisco con- 
siderably more than a week, and have prob- 
ably seen pretty much everything of in- 
terest here. I have visited the beautiful 
Golden Gate Park no less than three times, 



TO THE PACIFIC. 131 

and liave found in its conservatory, or else- 
where, each time increased reason for ad- 
miration. It is magnificent in the variety 
and extent of its surface and scenerj^, and in 
the perfection of its appointments. The 
old church of the Dolores Mission, three 
hundred years old, is an object of consider- 
able curiosity. So is the new City Hall, 
which has been in course of construction for 
many years, and is yet unfinished because of 
lack of funds. And the Jesuit College, and 
the Pavilion, and the Mint — and the w^hole 
city. Yan E'ess Avenue is the finest street, 
and the " Western Addition " the finest sec- 
tion of the city. One of the prettiest drives 
is through the Park and 

" Over the hills to the poor-house," 
winding as it does among the foot-hills of 
^' The Twin Peaks," and upon various com- 
manding eminences. Inspiration Point, 
just south of the Mission, is the most ad- 
vantageous position for a general view of 
the city and the bay. I saw a gang of 



1^2 FROM XEW ENGLAND 

twenty men and boys digging potatoes on 
the premises of the ahns-hoiise a day or two 
since. It is the first time I have seen pota- 
toes harvested in May. 

Members of our party who went into the 
Yosemite Yalley are now arriving at the 
Palace. They represent the roads as very 
bad, and the snow so deep as to have pre- 
vented their visiting some desired points, 
particularly the big tree where it is said a 
stage can be driven through a cavity in the 
trunk. But the scenery generally is the 
same in grandeur and sublimity that it has 
so often been pictured. The trip into and 
out of the valley was attended w4th much 
hardship and hazard, and individual mem- 
bers of the party will carry weary limbs 
and " cricky " sides for some days yet. But 
I do not hear that anybody regrets the 
experience. 

You may be interested to learn what are 
my impressions of San Francisco journalism. 
As you already know, there are six daily 



TO THE PACIFIC. 133 

papers in the city, four morning and two 
evening. The morning papers also print 
Sunday editions. In circulation and influ- 
ence the dailies all appear to be on an excel- 
lent footing, and they easily hold the fielxl 
against all attempted competition. The 
Chronicle occupies a leading position among 
its contemporaries, The Call, The Alta, The 
Examiner, The Post, and The Bulletin, follow- 
ing in about the order indicated. The first 
two and last two are Republican in politics, 
The Examiner Democratic, and The Alta 
" independent " — that is, reserving the priv- 
ilege of leaning toward the side which can 
offer strongest inducements. Tlie dailies 
publish double sheets on Sunday, and also 
on Tuesday — though why Tuesday any 
more than any other secular day I have not 
been able to discover. It is a noticeable 
feature of San Francisco journalism that 
the papers by common consent go ahead 
and print the news, leaving the bickerings 
and bitterness and brag for somebody else 



134 FROM NEW ENGLAND 

to indulge in. There is less personality in 
The Chronicle^ for instance, than one would 
expect to find in a journal of its scope, and 
especially when the nationality and charac- 
teristics of its proprietor are taken into con- 
sideration. I have heard no estimate of 
the respective circulation of these papers, 
further than that, after The Chronicle^ they 
print editions not widely apart in numbers. 
There is an English-speaking population of 
more than two hundred thousand in San 
Francisco, which fact alone warrants the 
belief that the apparent prosperity of these 
six dailies is also real and permanent. I 
notice that wdiile advertising is extensively 
done in all the papers, scarcely any large 
and black type is used. As a consequence, 
the papei-s have a neat and handsome 
appearance, and the general efi:ect is really 
to render all advertisements more attractive 
than they could be amid a wilderness of cuts 
and heavy disj^lay lines. San Francisco 
may be 'said to be thoroughly metropolitan 



TO THE PACIFIC. 135 

in its newspapers ; it produces as good as 
the best. 

And this leads me to speak of the disgrace- 
ful " Sharon vs. Sharon " trial now occupying 
the attention of the superior court in this 
city, and which furnishes the papers with 
three or four columns of sensational reading 
every day. The suit is brought by a Miss 
Hill for breach of alleged promise of mar- 
riage. Sharon, the defendant, is sixty years 
old, a widower, and by his own confession 
a libertine of the most accomplished sort. 
The situation divulged by evidence is simply 
infamous. But Sharon is rich in uncounted 
millions, and I suppose the woman thinks 
she can 2:et most money throuo^h the courts. 
She evidently has no modesty to be shocked 
by the appalling disclosures of her para- 
mour. San Francisco's history abounds in 
kindred episodes, which are within the 
memory of all of us. Among them this 
Sharon scandal will scarcely remain a seven- 
days' wonder. 



13^, FROM NEW ENGLAND 

I have attended divine service to-day at 
the cliurch of Dr. Stone — formerly of Mid- 
dletown, Conn., as I perliaps do not need to 
remind you. The doctor is very old and 
rarely officiates. His colleague, Dr. Bar- 
rows, is away on his vacation, and we lis- 
tened to a stranger. This is the finest 
church edifice in the city and as near perfec- 
tion in its interior arrangement as any 
audience room I have ever seen. There 
have been two military funerals here to-day, 
the first largely attended by military men 
and conducted with quite imposing ceremo- 
nies. A Chinese funeral was also solemn- 
ized this morning. It consisted, so far as 
public demonstration was concerned, in one 
wagon-load of corpse and two wagon-loads 
of refreshments for ditto. The refreshments 
were principally baked meats, among which 
what looked like roast goose and roast pig 
were prominent. The mourners were con- 
spicuous by their absence. A Chinese men- 
ial at the Palace tells me that the mourning 



f TO THE PACIFIC. I37 

is all done at the Joss House. The relatives 
take no active part in that. The same 
menial volunteers further information to the 
effect that the souls of Chinamen all have to 
go to heaven by way of China ; that it takes 
about two years to reach their destination by 
that route, and that they require to be well 
fed on the journey. Hence the funeral 
baked meats and the goose and the succulent 

pig- 
It is Sunday evening and nearly nine 

o'clock as I write this paragraph. Yet it is 
not the Xew England Sunday. The din 
which comes to my ears from the street 
makes me feel as if I ought to get out and see 
the circus coming into town. But it isn't the 
circus. It is only the orchestra on the bal- 
cony of the Market Street Theater, a block 
away ; and the gang of hoodlums with the 
drums are merely stray waifs from the tar- 
flats who have imconsciously wandered out- 
side the bailiwick. I look out into the glare 
of the electric lights which extend west as 



138 FROM NEW ENGLAND 

far as I can see, and observe the sidewalks 
crowded with pedestrians going and return- 
ing nobody can tell whither ; while scores 
of cable-cars are gliding noiselessly and con- 
stantly, bearing their burdens of humanity 
to and from the same nameless destination. 
The sound and sight are not familiar or 
pleasing, and somehow I want to get away 
from and forget them ; so I will stop writ- 
ing and retire within the sacred privacy of 
my inner chamber to read awhile and then 
woo balmy sleep. Good night. 



\T0 THE PACIFIC. 139 



X. 

Menlo Park and the Santa Claea Yalley 
— Monterey and the Hotel del Monte — Gov. 
Stanford's Home and Horses — Some Califor- 
nia Landscapes — The Picturesque City — His- 
toric Adobes — An Interesting Drive. 

Hotel Del Monte, ) 
Monterey, Cal., June -ith. \ 

I confess to great reluctance in attempting 
to write tins letter. It should be one of 
exceeding interest, yet the way to make it 
so does not appear entirely plain before me. 
I feel as one might be supposed to who has 
misappropriated or squandered his posses- 
sions and finds himself without any reserve 
in the hour of need. I liave used up all my 
superlatives where occasion appeared to 
demand them, and to my dismay the real 



~14:0 FROM NEW ENGLAND 

necessity has but just put in an appearance. 
I was stupid enough to go into ecstasies over 
the situation at Sierra Maclre Yilla, where 
they have flower gardens by the acre and 
roses which measure five inches in diameter. 
Alas for my innocence ! And when this val- 
ley of the Santa Clara comes up for notice, 
and they show me landscape gardening as a 
fine art, measuring its extent in square 
miles, the size of its rose trees by the cord, 
and its roses so large that they have to be 
cut before they can be worked into bouquets, 
there are no figures left — nothing but a 
few " dittos" or a box or two of turned com- 
mas. This hotel from which I write stands 
in the midst of a park of one hundred and 
twenty -:six acres, every inch of which is 
under the personal supervision of the most 
accomplished landscape gardener in the 
world. It is simply a miracle of beauty. 
Everything that refined taste can suggest, 
or that wealth, aided by nature and art, can 
secure, is here to add to the charms of this 



TO THE PACIFIC. 141 

delightful sj^ot. The beautifnl ba}^ of Mon- 
terey washes its northern border ; lofty pines 
and spreading oaks, and graceful palms, and 
sweet-scented buckeyes, and the brilliant 
pepper tree, give grateful shade to walk and 
lawn ; the hotel, with its hundred gables and 
cornices and verandas, rises in symmetrical 
proportions amid an ocean of flowers, which 
cluster and climb and revel over its walls 
and through its lattices, and up to its very 
eaves ; while the wide-spreading surface of 
the great park is like a velvet carpet on 
which are worked in colors of surpassing 
Hchness such designs as best please the eye, 
and are in most perfect harmony with their 
respective surroundings. But, before I at- 
tempt any description of this particular 
locality, you should know something of the 
trip hither and its incidents. 

The party were to leave San Francisco 
for Monterey, one hundred an4. twenty-five 
miles distant, at four o'clock Monday 
afternoon. Six gentlemen of the party, 



142 FROM ^'EW ENGLAND 

including jour correspondent, left by the 
morning train, stopping over for a few hours 
at Menlo Park, twenty-six miles from San 
Francisco, and a locality of considerable 
repute, as you will see. Menlo Park re- 
ceived its name from one of its pioneer 
settlers, a Doctor Oliver, who came from 
Ireland, where he owned a tract of land 
called by the same name. The town has 
among its inhabitants no less than twenty- 
two millionaires, including ex-Governor 
Stanford, J. C. Flood, Mrs. Mark Hopkins, 
Edgar Mills, the banker, Mrs. F. D. Ather- 
ton, Mrs. T. H. Selby, Hon. C. M. Felton, 
J. A. Donohue, the banker of San Fran- 
cisco and ]^ew York, John T. Doyle, Mrs. 
Joseph McDonald, and Mrs. J. B. Coleman, 
both among the O'Brien heirs, Judge H. P. 
Cohn, Colonel Eyers, the broker of San 
Francisco, Hon. R. C. Johnson, and others 
whose names are less familiar. Each of 
these is the owner of a .country seat, and 
the great number and extent of these pal- 



TO THE PACIFIC. I43 

aces and grounds give to Menlo Park an 
exceptionally attractive appearance and a 
wide reputation. The finest residence 
among them all is that of J. C. Flood. As 
the entrance to his grounds was closed, we 
could not approach the house nearer than 
the street, half a mile from the structure 
itself. As it towered in the distance, above 
the surrounding trees, it had the appearance 
of a large public institution, being painted 
white in resemblance to marble, and having 
quite an extensive dome and cupola. The 
grounds are said to be very handsomely 
laid out and cultivated. We were able to 
drive through the park and ranch of Gov- 
ernor Stanford, which is probably the larg- 
est of any, containing six thousand acres. 
It is impossible to convey any proper idea of 
the elegance of the private grounds of these 
California millionaires. It is like the ele- 
gance of Saratoga, except that the climate 
and soil of this valley render the possibil- 
ities here greater than at the East. There is 



144 FROM NEW ENGLAND 

the same wealth of flowers everywhere, and 
the grand old trees with the clinging moss, 
and whatever special charm the taste of the 
owner or his gardener can devise. The Gover- 
nor has for a year or two past been beautify- 
ing a plat of five hundred acres, near his pres- 
ent residence, with a view to erecting a new 
and more magnificent home. The recent 
deatli of his only son has, however, deter- 
mined him to change his plans. The son 
was greatly beloved, and is said to have 
been a most worthy and accomplished young 
man. Governor Stanford has now deter- 
mined to erect a free educational institute 
for young men on the site of his proposed 
residence, and to maintain it as a memorial 
of his son. We visited the immense stables 
of the Governor, wliere he keeps six hun- 
dred and eighty of his horses. They are 
probably the finest and most costly collec- 
tion in the country. Among them is the 
stallion Electioneer, for Avhich he has re- 
fused repeated ofiers of §100,000. We 



TO THE PACIFIC. I45 

saw also six other stallions of local note, 
which cost their owner respectively $40,000, 
$36,000, three $30,000 each, and one $24,000. 
There were over a hundred fine thorouo:h- 
bred yearling and two years old colts, neither 
of which could be bought for a thousand 
dollars. I know men in Hartford who 
would give big money to go through these 
barns and talk horse with Major Kathbun, 
the accomplished head of the establishment 
and the trusted lieutenant of Governor 
Stanford. By the way, this is the identical 
Major Eathbun who was in the theater box 
with President Lincoln when the latter was 
assassinated. The half day spent in sight- 
seeing at Menlo Park gave me a better idea 
of the homes of the wealthy in this part of 
the country than I have ever had. Many 
of them maintain establishments also in 
San Francisco, like Stoneman, and Flood, 
and Hopkins, and Atherton, and others, 
dividing their time between city and coimtry 
without regard to season. 
10 



146 FROM NEW ENGLAND 

At half past four we joined our friends on 
the " Daisy train " to Monterey. Tlie ride 
of a hundred miles through the lovel}^ Santa 
Clara Yalley, was one of great attractive- 
ness. Fields of barley and other grains 
succeeded vineyards almost the entire dis- 
tance. In the valley proper, which aver- 
ages about twenty miles wide, the soil is 
black, and deep, and rich. "Wherever cov- 
ered with crops the verdure is of a very 
dark green, as is also the foliage of the 
trees. The mountains on either side rise 
gradually, and their slopes present a mag- 
nificent picture, the shades of green on 
crest and gorge contrasting harmoniously 
with the tints imparted by the many-col- 
ored wild-flowers growing everywhere. If 
we had not become so accustomed to these 
marvelous landscapes, and should see a 
faithful painting of either of a thousand 
views which have to-day passed under our 
notice, we should doubtless declare the col- 
oring extravagant. A California landscape, 



TO THE PACIFIC. 147 

at this season certainly, is warm and bright, 
and many-hued, and intoxicatingly beanti- 
fiil. Without the faintest suspicion of 
fatigue we rounded the shore of the Bay of 
Monterey at half past seven, and before 
dark were in our respectiv^e rooms at the 
Hotel del Monte, the cleanest, sweetest, 
most homelike, and thus the most heavenly 
place of refuge that it has been our good 
or ill fortune to encounter during the pro- 
gress of this trip. It is an immense estab- 
lishment, but e^ndently under good manage- 
ment. Unlike the seaside resorts of the 
East, this is open the year round, its attrac- 
tions within and without being the same 
in January as in July. The hotel is within 
sound of the ocean surf, and but a few steps 
from the beach of Monterey Bay. It has 
a fine bathing pavilion, where are four 
immense tanks, in each of which the water 
is of different temperature, and the bather 
can take his clioice. In the pavilion are 
more than two hundred dressino;-rooms. 



148 FROM NEW ENGLAND 

one-half of which are for ladies, each being 
also provided with fresh-water shower baths. 
The fine sandy beacli ontside is utilized by 
swimmers who prefer the open sea and long 
distances. The park surrounding the Del 
Monte has, probabl}^, no equal in this 
country, if in any country, for the extent 
and variety of its natural and artificial 
adornments, in the way of banks, and trees, 
and flowers, and singing birds, and rare 
plants, its aviary, and fountains, and club 
house, its shady nooks, its " maze," its lawns 
for croquet and tennis, its bicycle runs, — 
its everything that can minister to the com- 
fort or the enjoyment of sojourners within 
its delightful area. The house itself is very 
attractive. It is of ornamental Gothic 
architecture, can easily accommodate five 
hundred guests, and is handsomely furnished. 
It has the special merits of thorough clean- 
liness, an excellent table, and the best of 
beds. The very atmosphere of the house 
and all its surroundings invites to luxurious 



TO THE PACIFIC. 149 

repose. Unlike San Francisco, the climate 
is delicious, the air pure and dry, and not 
subject to the daily winds which prevail 
higher up the coast. 

Monterey, within which municipality this 
property is situate, lies a mile away, at the 
southern horn of tlie crescent which is out- 
lined by the coast of the bay of the same 
name ; Santa Cruz lying at the northern 
extremity. The old town is most pictur- 
esquely placed, and the selection of the site 
certainly reflects much credit upon the good 
taste of the Jesuit Father who established 
here in 1770 the second of the Franciscan 
Missions founded in this State. There is 
not much beyond its lovely site to commend 
Monterey to the notice of the modern tour- 
ist, except its history, — and that does not 
extend far enough back to make it interest- 
ing to one so recently from Santa Fe, a city 
of about three times its age, and infinitely 
ahead of it in those architectural absurdities 
which make old A^merican towns interest- 



150 FROM NEW ENGLAND 

ing. The few remaining adobe houses in 
Monterey should have a history. They are 
the Barracks, the Fort, the Custom House, 
the Catholic Church, the Convent, anid half 
a dozen others. We stood half an hour or 
more taking on and airing our familiarity 
with ancient American history, in front 
of what had been pointed out to us as the 
Barracks, but which turned out to be only 
an old Mexican boarding-house. It is quite 
essential, in looking up antiquities in Mon- 
terey, that your information be gathered 
from a reliable source. • The old Custom 
House is the most conspicuous of all these 
historic edifices. It is well preserved, and 
still has, pointing skyward from its north- 
ern gable, the original flag-staff from which 
floated the first American flag that was 
hoisted in California after its acquisition by 
the United States Government. 

There are delightful drives from the Hotel 
del Monte in various directions, but the 
most interesting is that which takes the 



TO THE PACIFIC. \^\ 

tourist through Monterey and into Pacific 
Grove, skirting the ocean from Shell Beach 
to Pebble Beach, over the eighteen or 
twenty miles of road lying within the Hotel 
Company's private grounds. Along this 
coast are found the beautiful abalone and 
other sea shells, in great variety of form and 
color. Many of us have spent hours in 
searching for the most beautiful specimens, 
and in looking for the rare " lucky stone " 
of Pebble Beach. There are several barrels 
of these shells now in possession of our party, 
most of which will probably have to be 
left when the time of our final departure 
comes. There are seal rocks here, also, 
though not harboring as large a colony of 
seals as those at the ClifiP House opposite 
San Francisco. The moss-hung oaks and 
cedars, which are seen at several points on 
the road, constitute objects of much inter- 
est ; so do the banks of wild-flowers which 
are sure to present themselves wherever 
the rich loam shows a little sand or clav. 



152 FR03I NE W ENGLAND 

We expect to dwell here, delightedly, 
until Saturday, June seventh. Then we 
shall return to San Francisco, and make 
our ultimate exit from that point. If, 
as anticipated, I conclude to take in Santa 
Cruz and San Jose during the present 
week, it may give occasion for another letter 
before we leave California. 



TO THE PACIFIC. 153 



XL 

A LONG-TO-BE-KEMEMBERED WEEK Fare- 
Well to Del Monte and Afonterey — A Day at 
Santa Cruz — Some Bvj^ Big Trees — An Old 
Tannery — San Jose — Squintinrj Eastward. 

Palace Hotel, ] 

San Fkancisco, Cal., June 8th. \ 

The phenomenon of a rainy Sunday in a 
California summer kindly interferes with an 
engagement which I made last evening to 
attend church to-day with a friend. I deem 
the interference kindly because the morning 
finds me thoroughly tired by the unusual 
activities of the last two days ; and, much as 
I should enjoy an hour with Doctor Stone, 
the rest and retirement of my own room will 
be better for me physically, though morally 
and intellectually I chance to be the loser. 



154 FROM NEW ENGLAND 

We are here for a farewell look at San Fran- 
cisco and the Pacific Coast, for witliin a day 
or two the Raymond Party will face and for- 
w^ard march toward home. A long-to-be- 
remembered week have we spent at the 
Hotel del Monte, and amid the attractions 
of which it is the hub and center. I have 
spoken well of del Monte. The place fully 
deserves such mention. I rather like, too, 
the quiet old town of Monterey, and find 
that there is much about it after all to fas- 
cinate a person who has plenty of time to 
look it over and mouse among its antiquities. 
The town was evidently once a place of con- 
siderable importance. Its numerous streets 
are now scarcely more than relics of former 
greatness, for many of them are grass-grown 
and bordered by ruins of what were once 
the habitations and places of business of 
generations long since gone the way of all 
fiesh. Mounds of earth in several localities 
only remain of what may have been preten- 
tious adobes a century ago ; and the old 



TO THE PACIFIC. I55 

Main Street, now scarcely better than a 
cow-path, has but an occasional building- 
and a few miid-crowned and moss-grown 
corrals, to mark the thoroughfare which 
was doubtless the center of population and 
traffic in the palmy days of old Spanish 
rule. What little remained of business 
activity or of population, has gravitated 
nearer the beach, and there is small hope 
that the deserted district higher up the 
pleasant acclivity will ever be reclaimed. 

Monterey has its Chinese Quarter, which, 
by the way, should never be visited by the 
tourist except on a full stomach. The sole 
industry of the Quarter consists in drying 
squid, or " devil fish," for exportation to 
China. The atmosphere is abominable. It 
furnishes a strong argument that "the Chi- 
nese should go." No other community 
makes merchandise of so foul and stinking a 
product as dried squid. 

I found a genius at Monterey, in the per- 
son of Mr. T. G. Lambert, a notary public. 



156 FROM NEW ENGLAND 

justice of the peace, and lumber merchant. 
He lives in the old Custom House, one of the 
historic adobes of the city. His wife runs a 
shell store, and does a thriving trade with 
the del Monte's guests. You see he has an 
€ye for the main chance; that is because he 
is a Massachusetts Yankee. He has been on 
this coast thirty-eiglit years. He is a Blaine 
man all through. He paid fifty-eight dol- 
lars into the State treasury yesterday for 
knocking down an Irishman who said Blaine 
was a d — d rascal. He paid the money 
cheerfully ; and is now looking for further 
opportunities of the same sort. I like his 
earnestness, but cannot commend his method 
of defending political friends. 

I am under obligation to Mr. Harding, the 
obliging manager of the party, for a very 
agreeable drive in his private carriage dur- 
ing the afternoon of Friday. Mr. Harding 
has spent a large part of the past year at the 
Hotel del Monte, and is familiar with all 
points of interest in the vicinity. We visi- 



TO THE PACIFIC. ^57 

ted the Lighthouse, all the Beaches on the 
ocean side, Cypress Point, Cape Horn, the 
Eeservoir, Pacific Grove Ketreat and Camp 
Ground, Carmel Mission Church, drove 
through all the streets of old Monterey and 
Chinatown, and to the old and new Ceme- 
teries of the city. Of course we observed 
many objects of interest which had been 
unheeded in our previous ride with a hire- 
ling driver. The managers of these Kay- 
mond Parties seem to be constantly on the 
alert for opportunities, not on the itineraries, 
to increase the comforts and enjoyments of 
their tourists. How well they succeed is 
illustrated in the frequent graceful favors 
which I have had occasion to acknowledge 
from Mr. Harding and his assistants. 

Saturday morning eight of us took a six 
o'clock breakfast and left by early train for 
a day at Santa Cruz, arriving at the beach 
station soon after nine o'clock. Santa Cruz 
has long been the most popular and fash- 
ionable seaside resort on the Pacific Coast. 



158 FROM NEW ENGLAND 

Althouo;li the town lias a population of but 
five or six thousand, the influx of visitors dur- 
ing some months of the year often swells the 
number of actual inhabitants to ten thous- 
and. It is situated, nominally, on Mon- 
terey Bay, although so well on to the cape 
at its entrance as to be really as much an 
ocean as a bay town. In its location, as well 
as its composition, it is thoroughly pictur- 
esque ; and it is a common remark of tour- 
ists that it is among the pleasantest places 
in California. Grace Greenwood happily 
described it in a few words when she wrote, 
some years ago : " Santa Cruz is a beauti- 
ful, smiling town, seated on the knees of 
pleasant terraces with her feet in the sea." 
Many of the private residences in the heart 
of the city, and the clusters of cottages in 
the suburbs, are embowered in roses, which 
grow to wonderful size and in great profu- 
sion. We spent but an hour or two in the 
city, only observing enough of its scenery 
to occasion regret that days instead of hours 
had not been assigned for the visit. 



TO THE PACIFIC. ^59 

The main object of this incidental trip 
to Santa Cruz was to see Big Tree Grove, 
which lies eight miles up the San Lorenzo 
Kiver, and is reached by a narrow gauge 
railroad or by carriage. We employed the 
latter medium, partly because of a prefer- 
ence for the carriage drive through the pic- 
turesque San Lorenzo Defile, but chiefly 
because the narrow-gauge train had already 
departed when we were ready to start. 
The drive to the Grove occupied little more 
than an hour, and proved to be even more 
agreeable than had been anticipated, the 
road being good, the weather delightful, 
and the scenery positively enchanting. At 
the Grove we found a great number of 
visitors from San Francisco, and several 
parties encamped in tents on the banks 
of the adjacent stream. The big trees con- 
sist of perhaps a score of immense speci- 
mens, with hundreds of smaller ones, all of 
the Califoriiia red-wood, and exceedingly 
shapely in form. The largest is " The 



160 FROM NEW ENGLAND 

Giant," . which measui-es sixty-six feet in 
circumference, and is three hundred and 
forty feet high as it stands. Some weeks 
ago a gale of wind broke twenty-four feet 
from the top — its previous heiglit having 
been three hundred and seventy-four feet. 
It is a good, honest tree, and the measure- 
ment here given is of honafide trunk, not of 
root extensions. Its height to the first 
branch is about one hundred and twenty 
feet, or more than the entire height of most 
of the tallest trees of l^ew England. An- 
other large tree is the " General Fremont." 
This is sixty-three feet in circumference 
and three hundred and ten feet high. The 
lower fifteen feet of the trunk is hollow, 
and its interior measures upon the ground 
twenty-four feet eight inches in its largest, 
and eighteen feet in its smallest diameter. 
Forty-six men have stood upright within 
it at one time, and our little party of 
twelve found abundant room for circulating 
about within its walls without jostling each 



TO THE PACIFIC. 161 

other in tlie least. When this Grove was 
first discovered, in 1840, a Mexican family 
were living in this hollow tree, and it is 
known that several children were born 
there. In '46, when General Fremont was 
at Santa Cruz, he made his headquarters in 
the tree for a short time, which fact fur- 
nished a reason for giving it his name. 
The interior is approached through an 
aperture cut in the trunk, about three bj 
six feet in size, and is lighted bj three 
holes or windows, each about two feet 
square. The thickness of the shell, includ- 
ing wood and bark, as I measured it with 
my walking-stick, is about two and a half 
feet. The interior surface of the trunk, as 
high as a man can reach, is covered with 
the cards of visitors. Of course, each of 
our party contributed his individual paste- 
board to the collection. " Jumbo " is an- 
other large specimen, so called from a gnarled 
spot on one face of the trunk which resem- 
bles an elephant's head. " The Three 
11 



162 FRO^f NEW ENGLAND 

Sisters " stand side by side, two or three 
feet apart, a cavity tliroiigli the middle tree 
being used as an ice cream saloon in which 
several persons may easily sit around a 
table therein, where ice cream and cake are 
served. Other almost equally large trees 
have local names, and some of them a curi- 
ous local history. An old giant, lying 
prone upon the ground, once served as a 
tan vat, a rude tannery being located here 
when the Grove was discovered by white 
men. The huge trunk lies there, one hun- 
dred feet in length, and of an almost uni- 
form size from one end to the other. In this 
trunk are cut four vats, each twenty feet 
long and five feet deep and about seven 
feet wide. The sides of the vats are con- 
siderably decayed and broken, but their 
shape and dimensions are easily marked. 
This old tree, lying by its stump, in the 
same position that it fell and was used 
half a century ago, forms an interest- 
ing relic of an age which ante- dates civiliza- 



TO THE PACIFIC. Ig3 

tion on this part of tlie Pacific Coast. The 
tract of real estate on which the Big Tree 
Grove is located, is owned by the railroad 
company, and the Grove is leased to a Mr. 
Aldrich, who keeps the grounds in condition, 
provides entertainment for visitors, and has 
photographic views of the trees for sale. 
He is very polite in his attentions, and thor- 
oughly reasonable in his charges. The at- 
traction which this locality possesses for 
tourists and others is indicated by the great 
number of visitors who come here, some- 
times a thousand in a single day. I have 
made no incidental excursion during the 
progress of this trip, which has been more 
gratifying in its results, or will be recalled 
with greater pleasure, than this day at the 
Big Tree Grove of Santa Cruz. 

I have felt a little disappointment in not 
being able to mature plans for putting in a 
day at San Jose. Having passed through 
the city twice, and had glowing descriptions 
of its beauty from those familiar with'it, I 



1(34 FROM NEW ENGLAND' 

am quite sure that I have lost something in 
failing to visit the place. It is in the very 
richest part of the Santa Clara Yalley, is 
celebrated for its floral attractions, its fruit 
orchards, and its fine streets. Cherries and 
other small fruit, as well as flowers and 
trees, are at their best just now, and the sit- 
uation must be enchanting to the palate as 
well as to the eye. But we are too far from 
San Jose now to think of a visit this time ; 
some other time, perhaps. 

As before intimated, we feel as if the 
Kaymond Excursion to the Pacific were 
drawing to a close. We are here again in 
San Francisco to prepare for the return 
East ; and when we finally get started in 
that direction there will be few and short 
stops this side of our ultimate destination. 
I shall probably address you a letter from 
Salt Lake City, but that will be the last. 
This has been a trip of sight-seeing, and not 
for letter-writing ; and I often entertain re- 
grets that any attempt has been made by 



TO THE PACIFIC. \Q^ 

me to record observations or experiences by 
the way. With time to do it well, the 
story could have been made interesting and 
profitable ; as it is, it may, perhaps, prove a 
momentary gratification to some of lis who 
have participated, bnt nothing more. 



1(30 FROM NEW ENGLAND 



XII. 

Good-Bye to San Fkancisco — Again m 
the Pullmans — Ove?- the Sierra Nevadas — 
Rounding Cape Horn — Charming Moun- 
tain Scenery — Hydraulic Mining — Christen- 
ing a Papoose — Salt Lake City — In the Mor- 
mon Tabernacle — Eighty- One Babies. 

Salt Lake City, Utah, June 15th. 
The last two or three days in San Fran- 
cisco were busy ones for the Kaymond 
Party. There were farewell visits to be 
made among friends, final tramps and 
drives about the city and its environs, a 
long list of engagements to fill, and many 
souvenirs to be purchased. They were try- 
ing days for many a plethoric pocket book ; 
and I do not doubt that the trinket 
dealers of Kearney and Montgomery and 



TO THE PACIFIC. 



167 



Market Streets, and the Chinese Quarter, 
were made fullj a thousand dollars happier 
during the shopping tours of the ladies and 
gentlemen on Monday and Tuesday, and 
Wednesday morning. I employed the time 
chiefly in trips to the Presidio and the 
Golden Gate, taking one more look through 
Woodward's Gardens, a climb to the top of 
the observatory on Telegraph Hill, and a 
run over to Oakland— one of the prettiest 
cities, by the way, on this or any other con- 
tinent. On the morning of our departure I 
chanced to read in the morning paper some- 
thing about Judge Toohy's rulings, and it oc- 
curred to me that Judge Toohy is a brother 
of the celebrated Hartford auctioneer of the 
same name. So I posted off in the rain to 
the old City Hall, near the corner of Kear- 
ney and Washington Streets, and found the 
Judge just leaving the Superior Court 
Chambers. The mention of William Toohy 
as my friend and acquaintance, proved a 
passport to the hospitality of the big-hearted 



IQg FROM NEW ENGLAND 

judge, and his welcome was so sincere and 
cordial as to make it very hard for me to 
extend greetings and adieus, as I was 
obliged to, in almost the same breath. I 
shall never forget the warmth of his hand- 
shaking as he bowed me out of his sanctum 
and wished me " a safe and delightful jour- 
ney back to old Hartford ! " We shall all 
take with us many pleasant recollections of 
our stay in San Francisco, wdiich, despite its 
chilly winds and the phenomenal rain storm 
with which we left it deluged, is a city that 
bears acquaintance wonderfully well. 

We took our last lunch at the Palace 
Hotel at noon of Wednesday, and shortly 
afterward were summoned for rendezvous in 
the court-yard corridors, from whence the 
coaches of the United Carriage Company 
conveyed the party to the Oakland ferry. 
Four miles across the bay we found in wait- 
ing for us two of the elegant buffet boudoir 
cars of the Pullman Company, which our 
thoughtful manager had provided in order 



TO THE PACIFIC. \Q^ 

that we might enjoy well-cooked and well- 
served meals in transit between San Fran- 
cisco and Salt Lake City, in lieu of the 
uncertain accommodations of border hotels 
and restaurants. One who has not had the 
experience can hardly appreciate the satis- 
faction which attended our reunion in the 
Pullmans whicli we had learned to regard 
as home on the outward trip. Doubtless 
the fact that we were now heading home- 
ward, with nearer anticipations of the wel- 
come awaiting iis from loved ones, had some- 
thing to do with the general good feeling 
manifest in smiling faces and kindly greet- 
ings and extra-obliging manners. I am sure 
the weather was in no sense responsible, for 
the rain poured with a persistence which 
threatened to imperil railroad travel as it 
was jeopardizing the hay crop ex230sed to 
view in our progress up the coast of San 
Pablo Bay. In good time we made the 
straits of Carquinez^ where the mammoth 
ferry boat Solano, the largest craft of its- 



j^70 FROM NEW ENGLAND 

kind in the world, takes the entire train 
across to Benicia. Through vineyards and 
orchards and waving grain fields we went 
leisurely on to Sacramento, and at Colfax 
halted, the cars remaining stationary on the 
track throuo;h the nio^ht in order that we 
might make the transit of the next one hun- 
dred miles by daylight, through the region 
of some of the most romantic scenery on the 
continent. For over fourteen hundred miles 
of our journey from Colfax eastward, through 
California, E'evada, Utah, Wyoming and a 
portion of ^N^ebraska, our path is at an eleva- 
tion of from two thousand five hundred to 
over eight thousand feet above the sea level. 
Along here, as we cross the Sierra I^evadas, 
the altitude is from five to seven thousand 
feet. For much of the time we are actually 
among snow banks, and for several days in 
succession we appear to be surrounded and 
hemmed in by mountains whose rugged 
sides and summits lie deep buried under the 
accumulated snows of generations and per- 



TO THE PACIFIC. 171 

haps centuries. As the train winds around 
the hill sides, among intricate passes, through 
dark canons, over trestles and into tunnels, 
it seems as if we must be hopelessly lost, 
and it becomes a standing wonder how a 
railroad could ever be located here. About 
five miles east of Colfax the train passes 
around the point familiarly known as "Cape 
Horn." It is a projection of the rocky 
mountain side on which the road had to be 
constructed upon a kind of shelf; and as 
the train halts for a moment on the very 
brink, one may look down almost vertically 
two thousand two hundred feet, to the bed 
of the American River below, where the 
stream appears in the deep distance to be 
scarcely more than a little brook. 

We get magnificent views for many miles 
of our route through this American Canon. 
The gorges are of vast depth and extent ; 
the mountains covered with tall trees up to 
the timber line, and with eternal snow above 
it : the waterfalls and mountain streams 



172 FROM NEW ENGLAND 

come tumljling clown in surprising volume ; 
with now and then little valleys wliere wild 
flowers spring, as if nature had dropped her 
fancy morning robe among the hills, or 
thrown out some of her best parloi- carpets 
for an airing. The long snow sheds, cover- 
ing an extent of forty miles, obstruct the 
views on both sides in a most exasperating 
manner, but whenever the train stops for a 
moment — as for some cause it often does — 
we do not fail to alight and catch glimpses 
through the cracks and seams of the heavy 
plank sides. One of tlie very prettiest land- 
scapes at this great elevation takes in Don- 
ner Lake, which nestles among the peaks 
just east of the summit. It is about four 
miles long by one and a half broad, and lies 
at an altitude of six thousand seven hundred 
and forty-nine feet above the sea. Its waters 
are like crystal, and its pebbly beach is as 
fine as can be imagined. The railroad ap- 
proaches to within about a hundred yards of 
its margin. Its location is su-ch as to render 



TO THE PACIFIC. 173 

a nearer approach almost impossible. I do 
not suppose there is a human habitation 
within a great many miles of it. At Dutch 
Flat, Blue Caiion, and east as well as west 
of the divide, are extensive traces of h}^- 
draulic mining. Thousands of acres are 
covered with the debris of hills and rock 
elevations which have been reduced and 
swept away under huge streams of water 
conveyed through pij^es and conduits. This 
debris covers broad plains or stands like 
huge sentinels in spots to mark where once 
the mountain stood. The aggregate of 
earth which toiling miners have thus re- 
moved in their laborious search for gold, is 
simply stupendous. Perhaps I do not need 
to explain to you what hydraulic mining is. 
The miner selects his claim, w^hich may be 
a gravel hill, one or two hundred feet high 
and covering an area of ten or twenty acres. 
To find the gold contained in this hill by 
the old method, the whole elevation must be 
shoveled over and examined. But the hy- 



174 FROM NEW ENGLAND 

draiilic miner makes a reservoir at a high 
altitude on a neighboring mountain, and 
through an iron pipe plays water from the 
reservoir on to the hill as a fireman would 
play through his hose upon a burning build- 
ing. He sends sometimes a four or six-inch 
stream, under five hundred feet head. Un- 
der such influences his gravel hill gets 
washed away with great rapidity, while the 
saving of manual labor is several hundred 
per cent. 

We spent Thursday night at Truckee, 
and took breakfast next morning at Reno, 
the first station in Nevada east of California. 
I shall remember Reno, because of its de- 
lightful situation on a pretty crowning 
platean, surrounded by snowy mountains, 
which the rising sun gilded until they 
looked like lire opals in the hazy heights 
above. I shall remember it, also, because 
of the fine flavor of the salmon trout which 
constituted the first course of our breakfast 
at the station dining-hall. Granite Point, 



TO THE PACTFTC. 175 

an otherwise insignificant station, ninety 
miles beyond, was rendered memorable by 
the appearance of an Indian squaw with her 
one- week-old papoose, in a wicker cage, on 
her back. She was begging for the papoose. 
Her chief desire seemed to be for cookies. 
We had no cookies, nor other edibles 
adapted for so young a child, so we gave it 
simply a name. We christened the papoose 
Charles T. Almy, in honor of an honorable 
and esteemed member of our party. The 
wigwams of the Piute and Shoshone Indi- 
ans are frequently seen along the line of the 
railroad, and their occupants put in an ap- 
pearance at about every station. The Indi- 
ans are allowed to ride on the freight trains 
of this road without payment of fares. 
We were at Humboldt in time for dinner. 
For over three hundred miles the railroad 
traverses the Humboldt Yalley, by the mar- 
gin of the Humboldt Eiver, and under the 
shadow of the Humboldt Range of moun- 
tains. This Humboldt River, w^hich is a 



176 FROM NEW ENGLAND 

stream of about the volume of your Farm- 
ington River, is live hundred miles in 
length, empties into a small lake, known as 
^' Humboldt Sink," and thus disappears, as 
the lake has no outlet. Friday afternoon 
we made two hundred miles before darkness 
shut out the series of magnificent views 
among the mountains and palisades, which 
rendered the day and ride memorable. 
Friday evening found us eating strawberries 
and cream, mountain trout and baked pota- 
toes, with orange fritters and coffee, at the 
little station restaurant at Elko. Friday 
night, while we slept, our trusty engineer 
made the run of the Great American Des- 
ert in northeastern ^N'evada and northwest- 
ern Utah. At daybreak we came in sight 
of Great Salt Lake, and skirted its coast 
for thirty miles. Ogden was reached in 
time for an early breakfast, and lialf an 
hour given us in which to observe and ad- 
mire the natural attractions of this second 
city of importance in the territory. It lies 



TO THE PACIFIC. 177 

at the head of the beautiful valley which 
extends south be3^ond Salt Lake City, is 
protected by high mountains on three sides, 
penetrated by numerous canons which con- 
stitute avenues of approach for railroads 
from at least four points of the compass. 
It is a busy place, and delightful to behold 
in its setting of green and white mountain sce- 
nery, with the spreading valley at its feet and 
the blue lake in the distance. At Ogden we 
diverge from the direct route, for the pur- 
pose of visiting Salt Lake City, the capital 
of Mormondom, thirty-seven miles directly 
south. The route lies through a fertile valley, 
which is dotted here and there with little 
white houses, to the number of several 
hundred. In the distance we see tlie main 
road up the valley tilled with single and 
double w^agons, loaded with men, women 
and children, all going toward Ogden. In- 
quiry reveals the secret of the exodus; there 
was to be a circus. 

A clock, somewhere, is striking the hour 



j^78 FROM NEW ENGLAND 

of nine as our train makes the first halt, 
and we iind ourselves in the midst of Zion, 
as the Latter Day Saints denominate their 
city. The Mormon metropolis is a city of 
somewhat more than twenty thousand in- 
habitants, three-quarters of whom are Mor- 
mons. The great Temple is in the center of 
the city, and the streets, which run at right 
angles, are all named and numbered from it. 
The streets are wide and lined with shade 
trees, brooks of living water from the 
mountains running in trenches upon either 
side of every avenue, and serving to irrigate 
as well the yards and gardens. On the 
north and east rise the rugged spurs of the 
"Wahsatch Mountains, on the south and 
west the broad and fertile valley extends 
twenty or thirty miles, and away to the 
northwest lies the Great Salt Lake, or in- 
land sea, ninety-five miles long, thirty miles 
broad, and at an elevation of four thousand 
two hundred and sixty feet above the level 
of the ocean. We lose no time in making 



TO THE PACIFIC. 179 

up little exploring parties to the various 
points wliich demand attention. Through 
the courtesy of Hon. Guido Marx, your 
correspondent made the tour of the city in 
distinguished company and under the pilotage 
of a well-informed and attentive coach- 
man. We drove through all the streets, 
our particular attention being called to the 
original residence and to the grave of Brig- 
ham Young, the " Bee Hive " and the 
*' Lion," the Amelia Palace, the homes of 
present church dignitaries, the three houses 
of Brigham Young, Jr., in which his three 
wives respectively reside. Camp Douglas, 
etc. In an enclosure, surrounded by a wall 
ten feet high, are the Tabernacle, the 
Assembly House, the Endowment House, 
and the new Temple, which latter is in an 
unfinished condition, having been thirty-one 
years in reaching its present dimensions, 
and is expected to be completed during the 
present century. It is to cost ten millions, 
about half of which has already been ex- 



X80 FROM NEW ENGLAND 

pended. Its foundations are sixteen feet 
thick, its walls, whicli are of granite, being 
nine feet and nine inches thick above the 
foundation. When completed it will be a 
very substantial and imposing structure. 
The Tabernacle is a remarkable building. 
In it the Sunday services are held. It will 
seat ten thousand persons. It contains an 
organ whicli cost one hundred thousand 
dollars. Its acoustic properties are so per- 
fect that, notwithstanding its immense size, a 
pin dropped upon the floor at one end of 
the audience room is distinctly heard by a 
person standing at the opposite extremity. 
I attended services in the great Tabernacle 
this afternoon, and heard Joseph F. Smith 
blaspheme. Joseph F. is a son of Hiram 
Smith, and a nephew of the original Joe 
Smith, prophet and revelator. He occupies 
in the church the position of second coun- 
selor, Avhatever that may mean. There 
was, this afternoon, an audience of fully six 
thousand persons, three-quarters of wliora 



TO THE PACIFIC. Igl 

were women. The ordinance of the Lord's 
Slipper is celebrated every Sunday. It 
took twelve deacons one hour and twenty 
minutes to-day, to serve the bread and water 
(not wine). There were eighty one babies 
in the congregation, and you may well 
imagine they accomplished considerable 
howling, which, however, did not seem to 
disturb the other exercises in the least. The 
Mormon women, as they appeared in the 
Tabernacle, are certainly the worst looking 
crowd I ever met. It is a mystery to me 
how a man can endure a plurality of them 
in the capacity of wife, or any other capac- 
ity. There were fifteen or twenty celebrants 
who took a hand in the ceremonies, but 
three or four of tliem did all the talking. 
Joseph Smith was, evidently, the most cul- 
tured of the speakers. He seemed to ob- 
serve that there were many strangers among 
his auditors (special seats are reserved for 
strangers) and to have made up his mind to 
" give 'em fits." He traduced and maligned 



1^2 FROM NEW ENGLAND 

all other religions sects and denominations, 
and extolled the Mormon creed as the con- 
servator of all that is good in faith or prac- 
tice. He blaspheminglj classed Jo. Smith 
and B. Yonng with Moses and our Saviour, 
giving the former priority in the order of 
classification. It was a shocking exhibition 
of demagoguerj and fanaticism. The 
music was fine. The great organ, accom- 
panied by a trained choir of nearly two hun- 
dred voices, under a leader who knew his 
business, filled the immense auditorium w^ith 
music that in its grandeur and sublimity 
seemed worthy of a more exalted and sacred 
purpose. Strangely enough, the words and 
melodies were the same that I have heard 
in orthodox churches a hundred times. 

"My God is reconciled, 

His pard'ning voice I hear, 
He owns me for his child, 

I can no longer fear ; 
With confidence I now draw nigh, 
And Father, Abba Father, cry," 

Was rendered with a skill and pathos which 



TO THE PACIFIC. 183 

set many a disconsolate looking woman in 
the audience to sobbing audibly and convnl- 
sively. It was a cruel mockery of undefiled 
religion wliich made the head faint and the 
whole heart sick. I have conversed person- 
ally with several of these Mormons, and 
feel thoroughly disgusted with the whole 
business. If there w^ere space for it in this 
letter, I could relate incidents which have 
come to my knowledge or under my obser- 
vation already, which would lead you to 
sympathize with me in my unqualified dis- 
gust. 

We were entertained at the Continental 
Hotel during the sojourn here. It is a mis- 
erable hostelry, untidy in its furnishings, 
and worse in its cuisine. Yet it is beyond 
question the best hotel in the city. Tlie 
commercial houses here are generally quite 
commonplace in the variety of their mer- 
chandise, and by no means pretentious in 
outside appearances. I have heard much 
said of the attractiveness of Salt Lake City, 



184 FROM NEW ENGLAND 

but careful observation lias failed to detect 
a single reason, beyond the beauty of situ- 
ation, for the compliments of this sort 
which others have bestowed. In no respect, 
as I observe it, does the city compare fav- 
orably with a great many others this side 
of the Mississippi Yalley ; and it is so far 
behind Denver, for instance, as to dwindle 
in comparison. But we are exceedingly 
glad of having had an opportunity to see 
the city, which, by reason of its religion, 
has become fully as famous as any other 
city in the old or new world. We shall 
leave it to-morrow, and unless the rain 
which threatens to-night comes to interfere 
with the process, we shall '' shake the dust 
from our feet " in departing, as a testimony 
against this ungodly and adulterous genera- 
tion. 



TO THE PACIFIC. 185 



XIII. 

The Backwaed Journey — Social Calls in 
Mormondom — Mining Interests of Utah — 
Wehher and Echo Canons — Wonderful Rock 
Formations — Again the Rockies — Disintegra- 
tion of the Raymond Party— A Few Things 
Personal — Home Again. 

Niagara Falls, June 20tli. 
I bade you good evening last Sunday at 
Salt Lake City, since which date we have 
traveled over an additional two thousand 
five hundred miles of mountain and prairie, 
and find ourselves within an easy twenty- 
four hours run of Hartford. Somehow, there 
doesn't seem to be the same incentive to 
write details of the homeward as there was 
of the outward journey ; and, although there 
is quite as much of the novel and wonder- 



18(5 FROM NEW ENGLAND 

ful to be seen on the line of the Central and 
Union as on tlie Soutliern Pacific Railroad, 
I think I shall be able to condense the whole 
within the limits of this letter. 

We left Salt Lake City at three o'clock, 
Monday afternoon. The morning was devo- 
ted to personal investigations of this chief 
citadel of Mormonism, in snch various w^ays 
as the inclinations of the investigators seemed 
to dictate. My own inclination led me, in 
company with Mr. Fullam, to make a for- 
mal call on President Taylor and his wives 
at their home in the famed Amelia Palace ; 
and further to a personal interview with 
Joseph F. Smith, the chief apostle, who is 
alleged to be able to cure diseases and con- 
fer the gift of tongues, by the laying on of 
hands. We attempted a call upon Brigham 
Young, junior, but absence of that dignitary 
from the city, and a disinclination of his 
private secretary to allow strange gentlemen 
at either of the three houses where his three 
wives reside, and where he lodges alternately 



TO THE PACIFIC. 187 

when " at home," interfered with the com- 
plete execution of our purpose. At the 
Amelia Palace we found only the one wife 
with which the President now lives, and in 
the absence of the public functionary him- 
self our interview with her was exceedingly 
brief and thoroughly conventional. We 
met a most cordial welcome from Counsellor 
Smith, who is a gentleman of scholarly at- 
tainments and of most positive religious 
sentiments. After making a tour of the 
tithing houses, and some other of the insti- 
tutions of the Saints, I dropped in upon Mr. 
Prescott of The Daily Tribune and looked 
through the mechanical department of his- 
establishment. My last hour in the city 
was most agreeably spent at the Salt Lake 
Mining Institute, where I met the polite 
personal attention of Professor Clayton, who 
very kindly made up for me a collection of 
specimens of the ores and minerals of Utah, 
from the contents of his extensive and 
admirable museum and laboratory. I shall 



138 FROM NEW ENGLAND 

have something to saj hereafter concerning 
the possibilities of Utah as a mining terri- 
tory for the precious metals. 

Ketracing our way to Ogden, the point of 
intersection with the Union Pacific railroad, 
we shortly found ourselves headed east and 
fairly on the home stretch, without expecta- 
tion of further tarryings or delays on the 
trip. Supper was eaten at the Ogden Sta- 
tion Hotel, and the train lost as little time 
as possible in getting off; for the majestic 
scenery of Webber and Echo Canons lay 
all along the route within the next fifty 
miles, and our anxiety was great to take in 
the grand exhibition before night should 
drop its curtain of darkness between us and 
the panorama. Without even the formality 
of announcement, the show began in the 
magnificent rock and mountain scenery all 
about us, as the train made its first plunge 
across Webber River, and followed the 
stream in its tortuous windings into the 
<3ahon to which the river gives its name. 



TO THE PACIFIC. 189 

The rocky walls which confine the waters 
became higher and more precipitous, and the 
2:eneral view wilder, until at Devil's Gate 
the climax is reached, where the river makes 
a sudden sweep to thenortli and then to the 
southeast again, through a mighty chasm 
which seems to have been opened expressly 
for the purpose in the immense wall of rock 
which must have once stood there to dispute 
the further progress of this rushing torrent. 
For a dozen miles there is the same succes- 
sion of rock and ravine and towering height 
and nestling valley, until shortly the whole 
thing changes, and behold ! a great plain 
with outcroppings of tremendous cliffs and 
boulders in weird and fascinating forms of 
castles and fortresses, and ruined cities, and 
miles of wall standing w^here nature built it 
as if with line and plummet, thirty, forty, 
fifty feet high, in solid adamant. ^N'ear the 
railroad track we pass the famous Devil's 
Slide, photographs of which are on exhibi- 
tion in pretty much every part of the world. 



190 FROM NEW ENGLAND 

This " slide " is on the face of a high and 
steep mountain which is covered with ver- 
dure. Out of this verdure crop two great 
parallel walls of rock, about ten feet apart, 
starting apparently about one-third of a 
mile up the mountain and continuing at a 
height of perhaps sixty to seventy feet down 
to its base. The space between the two 
walls is not grass-grown, but of a rock- 
chippy character which would be likely to 
prove unpleasant even to the Devil should 
he attempt in propria personcE to accomplish 
the descent witliout his buckskin pants on. 
As we approach Echo Canon the distant ele- 
vations appear to be crowned with immense 
fortresses, perfect in form of rampart and 
bastion and battlement. The illusion is so 
complete that beholders often insist that 
these great natural wonders must be works 
of art, though a near view is said to com- 
pletely dispel the illusion. The locality is 
called Castle Park. A few miles east of it, 
and almost surrounded by one of the great 



TO THE PACIFIC. \(^\ 

natural walls before alluded to, is a collec- 
tion of huge boulders, each of thousands of 
tons weight, amid which are pretty little fir 
trees growing. This would be appropriately 
called Boulder Park, though it is designated 
by no name. The magnificent and charm- 
ing localities in this section seem to be too 
numerous to aftbrd each a name. 

A diversion from landscape viewing was 
here occasioned, for a moment, by the ap- 
pearance of a bear and two cubs leisurely 
ascending a foothill of one of the Wahsatch 
Mountain spurs within easy sight from the 
car windows. Elk, deer, antelope, buftalo, 
coyote, and prairie dogs without number, had 
already rewarded our diligent watch in 
localities where these respective varieties of 
wild beasts were supposed to abound, but 
never before a wild bear. We took breakfast 
at Rawlins, seven thousand feet above the 
sea. Eagles' nests in the clifis are a frequent 
sight, on many of which the parent bird is 
easily discerned. The Rockies, still snow- 



192 FROM NEW ENGLAND 

covered, present again their familiar peaks. 
We have been in sight of snow every day for 
more than five weeks, or ever since the day 
of onr arrival at Manitou. At Carbon sta- 
tion are extensive coal fields. Coal mining 
is the sole indnstry of the people of this par- 
ticular region. Dinner at Laramie, in sight 
of the Black Hills, from which first named 
place a stage route runs direct to Dead- 
wood. Again a series of strange rock for- 
mations, unlike any of those already seen, 
among them the Hed Buttes, a most re- 
markable formation. It is as if some chil- 
dren of giants had made a thousand red mud 
palaces, and towers, and monuments, and 
mushrooms, and tigers and lions, and ele- 
phants, and other representatives of things 
living and inanimate, each a hundred or 
more feet high and all of the same bright red 
mud, and had set them up on a great plain, 
where after centuries they had successively 
hardened and begun to crumble. We see 
them now at the crumbling stage. They 



TO THE PACIFIC. 193 

are a strange creation, and to me the most 
unexpected, so to speak, of anj-tliing I have 
seen. At Sherman we reach the summit of 
onr climb over the Rocky Mountains. Here 
we find the pyramidal monument erected in 
lionor of Oakes Ames, the projector of the 
Central Pacific Raih-oad. Six or seven 
miles east of Sherman stands the most 
remarkable of all the w^onderful natural 
fortresses thus far observed. It crowns the 
summit of a great elevation on the north 
of the railroad, and covers apparently a 
square mile of dead level. Years hence it 
wdll be classed among the great natural 
curiosities of the w^orkl. In proximity to it 
is a great boulder park similar to one already 
mentioned. I regard the trouble and incon- 
venience and expense of this trip as fully 
compensated by the unique and startling 
exhibitions, done in granite and sandstone, 
which have excited our surprise and admira- 
tion at every point between Ogden and the 
eastern slope of the Rockies. 

13 



194 FROM NEW ENGLAND 

We reached Cheyenne in time for supper, 
having approached it for thirty miles over a 
delightful bit of prairie which extended to 
the horizon, without stones, or trees, or 
bushes, or hillocks, — simply a great green 
grassy plain. Darkness deprives us of an- 
ticipated observations between Cheyenne 
and the ]S"ebraska line, but the train drives 
on by night as well as by day, and we wake 
Wednesday morning to find ourselves in a 
reo:ion of farm-houses and barns, and fenced 
pastures, and fields of corn and wheat, and 
fruit and shade trees, and such general 
evidences of civilization as we have not seen 
since leaving the valley of the Great Salt 
Lake. This is Central Nebraska. We reach 
Grand Island in time for breakfast. This is 
the first uncomfortably warm weather we 
have encountered. We have found more 
and warmer since. Watches are set ahead 
another hour before reaching Grand Island, 
to correspond with local time. Dinner at 
Omaha ; mercury at ninety in the shade. 



TO THE PACIFIC. 195 

Crossed the mile-and-a-quarter bridge over 
the Missouri between Omaha and Council 
Bluffs ; and lest I appear to thus unduly dig- 
nify the " Big Muddj," which at this point 
is not as wide as the Connecticut at Hartford, 
let me add that more than half of this bridge 
is over a marsh or a mud bank. From Coun- 
cil Bluffs, eastward three hundred and six- 
teen miles, to Davenport, we run across the 
beautiful farming lands of Iowa. At every 
station we observe acres of corn cribs filled 
with corn on the ear. Every rod of land 
seems to be under cultivation, which is in 
striking contrast with [N^evada, Wyoming, or 
even ]N"ebraska, where are untold millions of 
acres without an owner or occupant to turn 
up one shovel-full of its yet undiscovered 
subsoil. I understand now how easy it must 
be for a man who enjoj^s farming or stock- 
raising, to go into ecstasies when he gets into 
such a region as Iowa, where he is confronted 
by a wealth of soil never dreamed of in ]N"ew 
England, with foliage and grain fields and 



19g FROM NEW ENGLAND 

gardens of superlative strength and stateli- 
ness of growth, ahiiost without other effort 
than simply casting the seed upon the sur- 
face of mother earth. But, much as 1 enjoy 
the products of agriculture, of the garden, 
the orchard, the vineyard, or even the flow- 
er beds and the orange groves, I can find 
no delight in any of the processes involved. 
Excuse the confession ; it is gratuitous, and 
very likely implies a low condition of man- 
liness. I had a taste of farming in very 
early life which proved as satisfying as a 
full meal. 

We reached Davenport at eight o'clock 
Thursday morning, and from that point our 
return has been over precisely the same 
route as that taken by the party on its 
outward trip. At three p. m. the same day 
we were at Chicago, where we were given a 
rest of five hours with supper at the Sherman 
House. Resuming our places in the sleeper 
shortly after eight o'clock, we proceeded by 
the Grand Trunk, expecting to reach Port 



TO THE PACIFIC. 197 

Huron before daylight. A crippled freight 
train on our path twenty miles out of Chi- 
cago, delayed us, however, several hours, 
and we barely reached Lansing, Mich., at 
half past seven Friday morning, stopping at 
Durand for breakfast an hour later. We 
crossed the great St. Clair River, or straits, 
at Port Huron, by ferry, occupying an hour 
in the transit. Thence to IN'iagara Falls 
direct, reaching and crossing Suspension 
Bridge at fifteen minutes past eight in the 
evening, too near dark to get more than a 
glimpse of the outline of the great cataract. 
We feel a little disappointed at the delays 
which set us down here six hours behind 
time, for we had hoped to be able go 
ashore and get a nearer and more satisfac- 
tory view of Xiagara than can be obtained 
from Suspension Bridge or any other point 
on the railroad. But I am sure the manage- 
ment and the train hands have done every 
tiling in their power, though unsuccessfully, 
to help us out of the trouble forced upon 



198 FROM NEW ENGLAND 

our party by the derailed freight. From 
this point we shall proceed by the West 
Shore & BuiFalo Railway to Rotterdam 
Junction, thence by the Hoosac Tunnel and 
Fitchburg Roads to Greenfield, the Connec- 
ticut River Road to Springfield, and our 
own Consolidated Road to Hartford, If 
we have good luck I shall be with you at 
seven forty Saturday evening. 

The party, which left Boston more than ^ 
sixty strong, is pretty well broken up even 
at this point. Of the original number, 
three dropped out at Santa F6, one at Colo- 
rado Springs, three at Monterey, eight at 
San Francisco, two at Truckee, two at 
Omaha, one at West Liberty in Iowa, one at 
Davenport, eighteen at Chicago, one left us 
here at Niagara, four will leave at 
Greeniield, two at Gardner, live at Ayer 
Junction, only thirteen remaining to go 
through to Boston. 

And now, as this two months of pleasur- 
ing among eigliteen states and territories is 



TO THE PACIFIC. ;[99 

about to terjniiiate, let me say a few tliiivj-s 
personal of the party in whose more or less 
intimate companionship the long journey 
has been accomplished, and with most of 
whom I have already exchanged the final 
hand-shakings and spoken the good-by 
words. 

I do not believe that a party of kinder- 
liearted or more considerate gentlemen and 
ladies ever crossed the continent in company. 
The situation has been uniformly pleasant, 
and often under adverse circumstances when 
the good nature of the party and of tlie 
management was severely tested. I wish 
to make particular mention of my early and 
well esteemed Connecticut friends, Dr. ' 
Pinney and Mr. Merriman, witli their 
estimable ladies ; Mr. Whidden of Boston, 
whose pleasant face, and that of his son, I 
shall hope to see often in the future ; Mr. 
Fish of Brooklyn, ]^. Y., my most frequent 
companion in tramps and seances without 
number; Hon. Mr. Marx and family of 



200 FROM NEW ENGLAND 

Toledo ; Mr. Hamilton and familj^ of Phil- 
adelphia ; Mr. Yalpey and wife of Lynn ; 
Mr. and Mrs. Howe, Mrs. Brown, the Worces- 
ter delegation of gentlemen and ladies, to 
all of whom I am indebted for constant 
personal courtesies. I shall never cease to 
recall pleasant memories of days and nights 
in the same section with my robust partner, 
Mr. C. T. Almy, where the former were en- 
livened by his inimitable stories, and the 
latter by his equally inimitable snoring. 
And I must not neglect a modest allusion 
to the kind-hearted and irrepressible Mrs. 
Nichols, whose repeated request to " put 
my name in your letter," is at length affirm- 
atively heeded. I take the liberty of call- 
ing these names because they happen to rep- 
resent a few with whom I became most 
familiar ; if I felt equal freedom with others 
it would be an easy and pleasant task to 
connect the name of each of our sixty odd 
tourists with some interesting situation or 
incident of the trip, which we who partici- 



TO THE PACIFIC. 201 

pated should recognize at a glance. Such 
action would, however, be unpardonable in 
this correspondence, and I will not attempt 
it. I am ready to give a testimonial in 
favor of every railroad over which we have 
traveled, although you will grant that I 
have not lumbered up your columns with 
puiFs of this or any other description. Per- 
mit me in closing to express the opinion of 
our entire company in favor of the excellent 
management which has not only taken us 
over eight thousand five hundred miles of 
territory, some of it in places of great peril, 
and now returned us to our homes without 
an accident of the slightest magnitude, but 
that has succeeded in transforming a long 
and tiresome ride into a delightful excur- 
sion and a constant picnic. 



I re-open this letter, as the train is ap- 
proaching Hartford, to remark that the hills 
and valleys and streams and people of Con- 
necticut never looked so good to me as now. 



202 FROM NEW ENGLAND 

Home again ! Back from the land of gold 
and silver and '* bits," to the land also of 
greenbacks and good honest dimes, and 
nickels and pennies ! Back to the land of 
men and women, as well as of mountains 
and mines and prairies ! Back to my home, 
and all it contains and signifies ! I would 
not exchange one county of old Connecti- 
cut for whole states in the far west, unless I 
could sell out at my own price on acquiring 
the new possession. I wish, more than 
ever, to visit every part of our immense and 
wonderful country, but l^ew England shall 
ever contain the home to which I will re- 
turn again ! 

J. A. S. 



TO THE PACIFIC. 20B 



KEUNIOlSr. 



"While in transit from Ogden to Chicago, 
a formal meeting of the excursionists was 
held, to provide for one or more reunions 
after the return of the party to their respec- 
tive homes. A permanent organization of 
the "Raymond Pacific Excursion Party of 
April 24, 1884," was effected by the appoint- 
ment of Thos. J. Whidden as President, 
Mrs. J. E. Bacon, Yice-President, E. A. 
Merriman, Secretary, and Chas. T. Almy, 
Treasurer. It was voted to hold a reunion at 
the call of the Secretary, and the four ofiicers 
above named were authorized to name the 
place and date. 



